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Basically what looks good about it looks really awesome. But what looks bad about it looks like crap.

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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In other news I had my first windows 7 complete network structure failure today. Not a good sign, even vista too longer to fail than that.
Example of network structure failure (this particular example):
Bandwidth cap (incoming and outgoing) of 1.5KB/s for extended periods
10 second waiting period for DNS requests
followed by complete rejection of fixed DNS addresses.

Not as terminal as the vista failure as it didn't require a reformat, or even a reboot to fix, but I am now stuck with a dynamic IP address, until I reformat and dynamic DNSes are unreliable.

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Originally posted by keith, or jon??:

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I was Jonathan and am now Keith.

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Summary
When we first set out to tackle this article, we weren't quite sure what to expect. We've seen both the Phenom II and Core i7 up close and personal, and have a healthy respect for each platform. However, we are performance junkies around here and pride ourselves as overclocking enthusiasts that try to extract maximum performance from our systems, regardless of platform. And we have been suitably impressed by the overclocking prowess of the Core i7 lineup, as have many other enthusiasts the world over. But we also know that very few people are also able to take advantage of much of those increases in real world tasks that can truly harness that power to a great degree.

We've seen the pendulum swing from Intel to AMD, and back and forth, and as gamers, we had assumed that the strengths of the Core i7 platform would prove too much for a Phenom II to overcome in terms of gaming performance. So today's investigation set about not to prove a certain viewpoint, but to try to illuminate the facts of the unknown differences, not the least of which were our own experiences. And as we must admit, we were rather surprised at the results.

There are a few conclusions we can now definitively draw after today's exploration, plain and simple. It is fact that a Core i7 gaming rig will give you better overall performance in terms of absolute numbers and framerates; the difference isn't very much, but it does exist. It is also fact that such a system will cost considerably more money as well for what is essentially almost the same performance. When the results are then applied against those cost differences, it is also fact that the Core i7 system then becomes a very expensive option, costing hundreds of dollars more for little to no performance increase in most games.

Where things get really interesting is when you equalize the costs between the platforms and look at what you get for gaming performance in return. For a current difference of $215, you can purchase a second Radeon 4890 to go with a Crossfire setup in your Phenom II system and it will utterly crush a Core i7 gaming setup that will have only one graphics card. And we must admit, that provides a very compelling reason to consider an AMD gaming system, especially when we consider that a Phenom II X4 can overclock very well and also easily handle just about any regular use application. Unless you're doing a ton of video encoding or workstation renderings and animations, the cost for performance difference is very difficult to justify, particularly for a gaming setup.

As we said at the outset, passion can be a good thing when harnessed. And in this instance, using the gaming value presented by an AMD Phenom II setup can effectively let gamers harness far more additional graphics horsepower for their hard-earned money.

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Oblivion only did a better job of pop-in after 3rd party mods. Oblivion is still the worst game in history for draw distance failures until you mod it. 1600x1200 textures in front, dropped to i think it was 240x160 beyond about 10 metres.

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Sounds a lot like Crysis, but without the demanding-ness.

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This whole thing is Jeff's fault.

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I can't tell you how good this p4 is looking to me with those new air filters - it looks so efficient! And I didn't run the stress test yet - the weather has been coolish - but I jacked the gpu clock way up above the 695 - even past the 702 to about 724 where I once had it - and I can't get it to overheat - won't climb above 60 - the vf1000 just kills the temps. And my cpu is breathing so much better with the dust off the sink - it won't even get to 60 so far. So the freezer 7 pro will work really great with all the ventilation in this case.

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Wow, call of juarez again. The great thing about the demo was riding the horse! Nice professional review Jeff.

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Hey guys - Call of Duty world at war is half price on steam 2 days only through tomorrow at $25. Should I do it?

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Originally posted by Rich:

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Sounds suspicious mate. Are you CIA?

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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To be honest, apart from the little needless glitches, windows 7 still has the most fundamental issues that vista has, as it's the same operating system really, so it will suffer from the same issues that are the fault of the OS' design, rather than the software on top of it.

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Originally posted by keith1993:

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I must say I've had about as many problems and so on with 7 RC that I had with XP

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Rich, $80 is so much for a CPU that gets you such a piffling performance upgrade. The E5200 in my work PC is $66, and per-core is literally double the performance of the P4, and there's two cores not one.

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