Recent content by HWTactics

This may be somewhat "gray market", but there are OEM Win 7 COAs available on ebay for $20-25 that can be upgraded to Win 10 after. Only had a problem with standard online activation a couple times, and in those cases they passed phone activation instead. Win 10 wouldn't be compatible with...

I used to OC everything I owned -- now I undervolt with a mild OC instead :) I want to say it's because I've advanced up the "geek evolution" ladder, but another big part of it is that a top-of-the-line CPU ten years ago was still too slow for doing more than one thing at once, not to mention...

More of a problem of slow adoption of AMD standards, I think. If OpenCL had Nvidia's stamp it would be another story. Instead of trying to make a sinking ship float AMD is at least putting a workaround for CUDA in place.

Well hello there stranger! 1080p, 1440p, 4k gaming resolution? Single, multi monitor gaming?

Bout frickin' time. I love(d) Mechwarrior.

I tried a thermal pad with a large heatsink strapped to the back of a video card before. Didn't notice a lick of difference in load temps. The GPU die (or in this case CPU die) is what generates the heat and the heatsink takes care of that. It's squished right against it with thermal paste...

One thing to note. When I had a laptop for school I picked up a used 12.1" Thinkpad x201 for $250 with a first-gen core i5 and huge (8 or 9 cell) battery that pushed 6-7 hours battery life. It was small and light and discreet sitting on my desk so everyone around me couldn't easily read what I...

I think it's funny that if I didn't respond to this, anyone reading this thread would be completely misinformed. Let's do a comparison. What do you think produces better audio? This.... Or this? Surely we can agree that dedicated input, filtering, processing and output stages are better...

Did you read my first post? Yes @Sunnytheseal, the FX-8120 is limiting your GPU performance, in some games not at all and in others, a little bit or significantly. As I first mentioned playing L4D or Diablo 3 you will have no problems though.

Can you give us an idea of what kind of performance you're expecting? For that generation of older games, I'm guessing we're talking around 9800GT levels of performance? Here is a new system pull low-pro HD 7570 with 1GB GDDR5 for $40. Slightly faster than the good ol' 9800GT. TDP ~50W...

Another graph comparing the FX-8150 to an older i5-2500K: More products can be compared at http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/434?vs=288 I agree, but unfortunately there aren't any better reviews I can find due to all major review sites throwing their Bulldozer CPUs in the trash after...

Yup, you will definitely notice a performance loss running an FX-8120 at 1080P, even if it's OC'd at 4GHz. The overclock doesn't help these CPUs much in gaming as the cache and pipelines (IIRC, it's been forever since BD) hamstring it. Fortunately L4D and Diablo 3 aren't too needy when it...

The bulldozer CPU will hold back most video cards slightly in games compared to an i5/i7/8350, but it depends on the games you're playing and your monitor's resolution. Can you add in that info for us? Some games don't care too much about CPU performance while others do; also, higher...

Sound Blaster Recon 3D $35 ASUS Xonar DGX $42 Either of these cards are better than any on-board audio and when paired with the Z170-A, still cheaper than buying the Ranger or Hero. I don't have links from sellers in Spain, but the ASUS Xonar and Sound Blaster X-Fi or Recon cards are the more...

Hi wachuwey, The Hero, Ranger and Z170-A motherboards are all strong overclocking motherboards with large VRM heatsinks and many power phases. None of them will limit your overclock with an air cooler, so if money is a concern I would go with the least expensive. The only motherboards I would...