RTB

Borrow it indefinitely? With that kind of setup I get the idea you're waiting for the new cards of ATI and NVidia, because the 9800GTX+ is the weakest part there. And with the Zalman cooler, you could OC the CPU quite a bit.

If I had to guess it would be the tcp settings on the XP box, as the default values simply weren't set for broadband as we know it now (unless you're in rural america, australia, or any other place where broadband is very broadly defined).

Your motherboard and the memory speed on your video card are completely seperate, they don't affect eachother at all. The specifications are a bit messed up, the 1GB version has a 873 base clock, or 1746 Mhz effective, while the 512 MB version has a 1000 Mhz base clock, or 2000 effective. The effective speed is due to it having GDDR3, and is sometimes used as marketing trick. Since you have a s939 motherboard I'm guesssing you're on a single core, and don't really play the latest games at high resolution. Putting lots and lots of memory on a cheap videocard is yet another marketing trick, since it can't use so much memory properly. Unless you play something like Oblivion with custom extra huge textures, go with the 512 MB version.

They're both 45nm Core 2 Duos, the T6500 has 3 MB L2 cache, the T4200 1 MB L2 cache, and TDP is the same. I would guess that the T6500 performs a bit better (by 1-5% percent or so), but it's up to you if it's worth the extra 50 dollar.

In a traditional forum, that means a lot of clicking through to even see any threads (if not using the 'new posts' feature). This idea is not all that different from labelling threads upon creation (or by moderator influence), which is hard to be consistent at, though having pre-defined labels is a good start. It might be better if the forum stayed the same, but with the option to view only threads with label x.

Perhaps worth noting is that these steps are several years old, because of the 256MB memory value, it mentioning a FAT32 partition for windows, and the QoS myth. Conservative swap makes more sense these days with 2 - 4 GB of RAM standard, even though I get the feeling nowadays people think RAM should not be used, complaining that program X is using lots of memory 'for no reason'.

The card will be more consistent than the network chip in most cases, but if it's going to be noticable, I can't tell you in advance. The Killer NIC is a little linux server/router in your computer, but its uses are limited.

But then again, in America you have to pay for your own defense. And the courts do not side with you by default, as your opponent has plenty of money to throw around. 5%? It's less than that. I guess this is quite a fitting moment to say that running an unsecured wireless access point is even illegal in my country, because of the possibility that you aid criminals. It's a retarded reason, but as it is the law is against you. Amusing way to make you lose your data, and hardware. Don't think the insurance company will pay for that. Also, if the cops try to seize your stuff and that happens, you will be accused of destroying evidence, which as you can guess is against the law. Plenty of people went to jail simply because they destroying possible evidence, without any actual evidence left they did anything wrong.

That system is not upgradable for the sole reason that the power supply will not be able to handle anything more than the specs, and eventually it won't even be able to handle those specs. Perhaps I'm prejudiced against mass prebuilt systems, but power supplies are something the manufacturers skimp on as far as I know. Remember that if you save the money for another prebuilt system, take special note of the video card in it, as high video memory (512 MB, 1 GB) is not representative of how powerful the card is. And it's exactly the video card that has to do most of the work for modern games. Assuming I'm wrong on the power supply, you can upgrade the machine with 2x 1 GB DDR2 RAM as you have 2x 512 MB atm. A little but powerful (for the price) video card is the ATi Radeon HD4670 (With (G)DDR3 video memory), it should let you play modern games on low resolutions. As for the processor, it's dependant on which CPUs your motherboard supports. As it currently has a Conroe type CPU, it is probably upgradable to an Core 2 Duo E6550, or even the Core 2 Duo E6750. But if the motherboard supports a newer generation you have more choice in the matter. Note that replacing the CPU requires you to remove the cooler, which can be a mess for someone who's never done such a thing, and it requires thermal paste for replacing the old goo between the old CPU and the CPU cooler. Finally, if it takes 10 minutes to boot, your windows installation is horribly bloated. I would suggest to backup all data and programs, and format.

I'm not sure if he tried that, and note that the 8500GT is a very low-end card, even though it has 'high numbers', last I checked it's beaten by the old 6600GT. RyanS: The card can theoretically do DX10, but it won't be playable.

It's your video card, an 8500GT is a low-end card. You could get away with running 1280*1024 as resolution and low quality settings at best, but really nothing higher than that. If you are willing to spend some money on a new video card you will be able to play most new games at high quality. Highest quality is still for machines that are way expensive, and the difference in video quality is less than what you'd think. Of course, I don't know how the prices are in your country, so I'll just await a response on if you're willing to upgrade at all.

You should note that the claim of overwriting with several special patterns is just a marketing trick. Zeroing the harddrive is just as effective, according to some recent studies.

So you'd be taken even less seriously. If you still insist on using 486s, or maybe even a Pentium I. P2s, P3s are loose change nowadays. Nice exaggeration, it totally nulls anything you try to get across. The TCP protocol itself can even become a bottleneck eventually. Where did I say anything on using dual Gbit for internet downloads? Besides, harddisks tend to be a bottleneck for single Gbit (~125 MB/s), but if you use purely CPU generated traffic, then sure, dual Gbit has use. Prove it. If what someone says goes against the general idea, it is him/her who has to prove he is right, not the people with the general idea. Quit trolling. Of course, the TCP protocol was never made to handle such speeds by default. The fact that I cannot get that speed stable is due to other reasons, such as bittorrent abuse (the weakness of TCP, really). On the other hand, you claim there is no point in technological advance, because of the mythical cap on internet speeds for the general population. If you're allowed to generalize that much, then so can I. Trolls get banned, sure. Don't push your luck. Blako: The reason that speeds get limited by distance, is that TCP requires interactivity between two nodes. The wikipedia entry on TCP should help you understand.

We're not in the 80's anymore though. For throughoutput in a PC the only bottleneck left is the harddisk, which reaches speeds of 50+ MB/s, which is 400Mbit/s or higher. DOCSIS 2.0 cable modems cap around 50 or higher (not sure, but it's far higher than the 20 Mbit you claim), DSL is a distance-dependant connection, but can reach speeds of 24 Mbit (DSL2+) when near the node. One can and will be able to get the advertised speed through tweaking and finding the right server (close distance and high speed capable), I'm on 24/2.5 and I have seen stable speeds of 2.8 - 2.9 MB/s on certain downloads. On some overloaded networks, picking a moment where the network is least loaded can help too. One other possible limitation is network speed, most routers operate at 100Mbit, though Gbit is available. Budget motherboards offer 100Mbit network connectivity, anything above that is Gbit, and expensive ones even have dual Gbit. Cat5 cable is not made for Gbit, but can reach speeds higher than 100 Mbit. Cat6 should be able to reach 600-700 at least, the exact numbers I do not recall, but once again, far above your 20 Mbit 'cap'. I will not allow anyone to spread such misinformation on testmy.net.

Oooh, a prize. What do I get?

NVidia fixed that quite some time ago (series 80 drivers if I remember correctly), cards of different brands could then be used together in SLI.

9800GT is a rebranded 8800GT in any case. There seems to be a rare chance at getting a 55nm part, but I wouldn't bet on it. NVidia also was supposed to be working on allowing mixed cards in SLi. So it should work.

Be glad it's only one.

You can be infected by just a ping? I'm sure someone can fit a good sex joke in there.

"Dodge this."

That makes sense, in terms of raw input and what it costs to make, it should be the the most profitable part of their company, never mind the silly container around the ink. Yes, I can see the point in not giving away what gives the most profit. Accelerated testing are of course only an approximation, I don't see how home-user inkjet prints can last any significant amount of time, they don't pay HP enough money for that yet. The method for laser should be inherently superior to inkjet, so if you can get the paper to last 500 years, then perhaps. Time will tell how long they really last. There's no such thing as "not biased", I'm biased to be rather skeptic of any company, in specific the large ones.

I wonder if you get any of the "Why is the ink so damned expensive" questions, considering it's one of the most expensive fluids on the planet.

That's an odd effect indeed. It can probably be abused by setting it low (<10), so that packets never reach their destination, leaving the victim with 0 KB/s effective upload, killing his internet. My default TTL is 64, but when it hits the cable modem, it appears it gets reset to 255. Odd stuff.

The Time to Live value is added to each packet as you send one, and decremented as it goes past internet routers. Once the value reaches 0, the packet is discarded. This mechanism is used to prevent packets from circling the internet forever, without it the pipes that form the internet would eventually clog up. I know that it may be used by ISPs to check if you're running a router, if they insist on it. This is one of many TCP/IP settings you never have to mess with. (though you can abuse it for a prank, by setting it real low )

Note that we use Cablenut for editing these settings in windows versions under Vista. Vista itself doesn't have much to tweak, it's supposed to be dynamic. And the settings you gave are rather simple, they are not the optimal values for each and every connection. Look around for VanBurens posts on this subject, they're more extensive.