Well, the following items have just become available, locally, at a decent price (for me!):

Force-feedback Mouse
Speedpad

These were released near end of last year, I think, so has anyone come across them; bought or actually tried? If so, were they gimmicky-average or quite neat? Apparently UT is supported, but I'm wondering about for Rune, in particular.

Suggestions much appreciated thanks. It's either this or a sturdy MX310/MX500 optical mouse from Logitech.

my buddy has one of those speed pads...he loves it...a little awkward for me though, but i guess it's an aqcuired taste. personally i'd stick with both mouse and keyboard

Ya, I think I like the good 'ol mouse and KB combo.
BTW becuase this is a gaming hardware thread, lets all post our system specs!
Woot.
Mine is a 2.3 gig AMD 1 gig DDR 333 Ram radeon 9600 pro type stuff.

maybe part of why rune developed a niche following and is enjoying bursts of attention is that only now is the 'average' system handling it well. i did see rune when it was released years ago (rather poor marketing even to a melee addict like myself), but at the time my cpu and ram just couldn't handle it. no doubt many long-time players will have realised this already.

in fact, i had a wonderful time playing through 'old' games my old system couldn't handle and it was during this 're-discovery' that i happened across rune.

soc's system sounds like the one i'll gradually upgrade towards in the near future, should half-life 2 and doom 3 become more than diversions.
but for now: Athlon 1800XP, 512 DDR Ram, Radeon 8500, Aureal3D sound, 17 in. CRT, 'temperamental' ADSL.
every recent game runs fine; except 'enter the matrix' for some reason which i haven't explored yet (probably software really).

love my computer, bout a year old..but cannot wait to afford a new one down the road..more beefy

Sony Vaio
P4 2.2
512 RAM
100 GB HD
GeForce2 Ti
DVD ROM
DVD R/RW
15" Sony LCD
Basic Sound
Basic Speakers

hey it does the job...well that is until Doom 3 and Half Life 2 come out, i hope for my next PC to be a Alienware, and i wont hold back on options.

It will come down to though a choice between
P4 3.0 w/ HT or the new Athlon 64 bit, what do you guys think?

haven't heard bout the mouse, it looks kinda neat. but i'm all for the mouse/kb combo . . . OLD SCHOOL! lol.

Specs: 3.0 GHZ Pentium IV, 2 gigs DDR RAM, GeForce 5900 w/256 MB RAM, Audigy 2 - 6.1, 240 gig HD, 19" standard monitor, pioneer dvd-r, plexwriter cd-rw, klipsch promedia 5.1 w/500 watts power, umm i think thats all . . . definitely half a years worth of paychecks, but its been worth it. Alienware of course. I standardly run 3 game servers, 1 FTP server, Trillian, winamp3, and a game or two and it runs it all very nicely.

quote:

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Originally posted by ._:ERASER:_.:
P4 3.0 w/ HT or the new Athlon 64 bit

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okay, seems like price is no issue here.
the thing i've noted with the hyper-threading thing is:
firstly, not all benchmarks are updated to actually account for it so beware the scores you use to compare.
secondly, hyper-threading's strength is in multi-tasking? that said, it's not all multi-tasking however.
for example if you were to run rune in background, have some sort of downloading application running and then try to open up a powerpoint presentation with over 100 slides, then it would be beneficial, as both the floating point calculations and arithmetic logic unit would be used well and separately. however if you're trying to run more than one 3D game simultaneously, there would be no appreciable performance boost beyond the cpu increase, as there is a single bottle-neck for the floating point unit calculations.
realistically speaking, how many times would you have to run two games at same time? but then again, how many of you multi-task to that extent?

so i'd read more about the advertised 'gains' of hyper-threading if they only use scores to compare.
maybe someone will comment on the new 64's; i'd like to know too.

LOL, got to see some of those 64s in action while at Taiwan's annual tech expo...

Overall, wasn't as impressed as I thought I'd be; eg benchmarks of the AMD 64 FX-51 vs Pentium 3.2 Ghz in UT2K3, Jedi Academy, 3DMark etc. More definitely for the former, but still the hype made me believe >30% was possible...
But no 64-bit stuff being run though..
Also on show was Pentium Itanium, with capability to run 32 bit apps as well, but was strangely slow in this mode...No sight of Apple 64 stuff.
At the show, Linux operative sentence was actually in 64 bit mode, with Windows in 32.
Opteron was shown as well, and is much more powerful as a server than FX-51 'cos of some sort of extra HyperTransport(tm) technology...
No overclocking, as opposed to getting a Pentium and overclocking it to get close to 75% of the 64s' performances...
Graphical work still benefits, but the current line of socket technology doesn't seem upgradeable to a layman like me...Also totally new DDR ram needed when going to 64s...

And Mid, I double-checked but was a bit confused; it seems the power rating for these things is actually not as much as supposed...the FX-51 runs only at 2.2 Ghz?
In any case, here's the case for the case...

Thanks Dante. The reason for the low G-hz is because the way the CPU handles the signals. Also because of the cache.

My cousin has a SGI machine with a 2 MB cache and two 200 Mhz Processors. This machine is about 5 years old and it kicks the hell out of my machine for Maya.

AMD 2100+ XP, Asus A7V333 +6ch onboard, Samsung 512MB DDR PC2100, Nvidia Ti4200 128 MB DDR, 19" Samsung SyncMaster 955DF(DynaFlat) CRT, Sony 16x DVD-Rom, Asus 32x12x40x CD-RW, 60/40GB Western Digital 2 MB cache drives.

Oh btw you need applications and software programmed to use 64-bit technology which only happens to be very expensive stuff (ie. Windows XP 64, Alias - Maya, Adobe Products, Scientific programs, many flavours of the Unix community (Linux, FreeBSD etc.)etc.) There are some programs that are 32-bit normally that can be changed to use dual 32-bit processors that might be able to recognize the 64-bit processor.

Chances of the full use of 64-bit processing won't be seen for another 3 years. We have just completed the transition phase to Windows XP and moderate machinery to handle todays demands. I would hold on purchasing a 64-bit at the moment and just up your system to its highest specs. then ride the coaster to the new stuff.

Hmm, hmm, abot the "new RAM". Its not really new, its just that the A-64s run good with Registered RAM, not your usual unbufferred. At newegg, 1gb of Kingston Hyper-X Registered runs for $380. Then again, that might just be only 512mb!

And the only current Athlon 64 that can handle Dual Channel RAM is the FX-51, and that thing just isn't worth the price when there;s a neato 3400+ sitting down there.

But Intel's stupid "Extreme" thing has a 2mb L3 cache, which I haven't seen before, and that I absolutely LOATHE Intel for (:cough:AMD-fanboy:cough.

And, 2.2ghz for the A-64 is damn good, clock rates mean nothing. Intel Celeron at 2.8ghz is a P4 at 1.7ghz ("if its lucky!"). Intel milks folks with their 'loud' clock rates, while AMD, if their Athlon XP hit 3.2ghz, Intel would be in the shitter, so to speak. Truly is all about the cache, if I hadn't known better about caches I would have gotten the evil 2400+ with the T-Bred core instead of the 2500+ with Barton, eons better and with a new mobo (I bought shit), easily a 3200+, can definitely go higher, so I've heard.

Now I forgot what I was saying, so I end here .

Hmm... am I allowed to post my system specs? :finds an old marquee that had it listed...: ...

AMD Athlon XP 2500+ @ 2.16ghz
Vantec Aeroflow HSF
BIOSTAR M7NCD nForce2 Mobo
256MB PC2700U DDR SDRAM
512 PC3200 DDR SDRAM
Connect3d ATi 9600PRO 128MB (425/648)
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
"ROCK 2001" 2.1 Speakers
120GB SEAGATE 5400RPM 2MB Cache
120GB WDC 7200rpm 8MB Cache
500W Powertek Power Supply
LITE-ON 52x32x52 CD-RW
LITE-ON 16x DVD-ROM
3x Blue LED Fans
Raidmax 278WBP (2x Blue LEDs)
HP P930 19" 1920x1440 .24mm Monitor
Black Logitech Keyboard
Logitech MX310 Optical Mouse

--1GB PC3200, 9800XT, DFI Motherboard=I won't be getting anything new for quite some time (after that). And I don't know what those specs say specifically, one or two might be outdated :shrug:.

"But can your grand dad do this!" Spoke in a Ukraine accent from a grandpa.
:cross hands from knee to knee: :slap knees in sync with hand claps: ogle your neighbour from aways: LOL the last one I am not sure where it came up but hey.

P4 3.2ghz HT
2gb DDR 400mhz ram
Radeon 9800 XT 256mb
Sound Blaster Audigy™2 (D) Card w/Dolby 5.1, and IEEE 1394 capability
21' inch high res monitor
500gb harddrive
48x CD-RW Drive + 8x DVD+RW Drive
Altec Lansing THX Certified ADA995 Surround Sound 5.1 Speaker System

Upgrading to p4 3.4ghz HT Xtreme edition in a week also getting 4gb ram for it, then moving my p4 and ram to my 2.8ghz and 1gb ram and keep passing it down though my 7 comps. So actully I end up upgrading them all. =P

15" G4 power book
1.25 ghz
500mb ram
80 gb hdd
-dvd burner
wireless airport card
blue tooth
running OSX 10.3.2

15" G4 power book
1.25 ghz
500mb ram
80 gb hdd
-dvd burner
wireless airport card
blue tooth
running OSX 10.3.2

i only have one of them lol

LOL everyone on this forum sure does hate to edit their posts , silly folk!