Oh so you aren't actually assigning a keypress to the macro key, just trying to bind it directly in SWTOR? I don't really see how that would work though..

You could assign each macro key to something odd like Alt-P, then bind alt-P in swtor to the potion hotkey.

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Originally posted by demarc01
Yup. Says no updates available.
Running it as Admin as well did'ent help.
 
Only had the damm thing a week so I am not to familiar with it, but trying to run the *on-the-fly* macro record does nowt and even pre-programmed macros dont work in game. Oddly if I minimize the game and open a notepad .. works fine /shrug.
I may play with it some more later, for now I sent the wife out for a G510 ... heh.
 

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Hm I actually tried it both ways, doing on-the-fly, and pre-programmed.. as well as application specific SWTOR macros.. had no issues.

Maybe you need to run SWTOR as admin as well? (My account is an admin account with UAC turned off)

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Originally posted by demarc01
Anyone else using a X6 to play SWTOR?
Seem to be having issues getting the macro pad to work. Did some digging and Microsoft say that because of Bioware's cheat detection software the macro pad (number pad and additional macro keys) may not work. WTF?
Thinking about running down and buying a Logitech .. apparently they work around it (The wifes old G15 works fine)
 
ANyone got input before I head to the store cursing Microsoft (yet again)

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Hmm I had no issues creating macros on my X6 with SWTOR just now. Is your Intellitype software up to date ?

I don't think that's actually any bigger than the 6970 is. The 79xx is rumored to have a 384-bit memory bus btw so that is definitely in line with the rumor.

Pros:

• Much faster than laptop HDD's, whether 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM due to 2.5" platter size
• Not mechanical so banging your laptop will never cause the head to scratch the platter
• Contributes almost no heat to the system

Cons:

• Money

I would buy a 120GB SSD, make it your main OS drive with your MMO's on it, and keep your mechanical hard drive in there for mass storage with the power saving set to shut it down after 5 minutes of inactivity.

Hard drives in laptops are an even bigger bottleneck than in desktop systems because the physically smaller hard drives. The outer track of a hard drive is the fastest because it covers more surface area in one spin than the inner track. A laptop hard drive is missing 1" of outer track, and is tuned to run cooler (re: slower). Most laptops have the processor speed and memory capacity to be very snappy, but they aren't, because the hard drive chugs.

You will notice this speed in multitasking, streaming textures in game, boot time and game load time. The last two are usually not a big deal to people, and the multitasking speed depends on how you use your laptop, but the streaming texture speed is pretty noticeable in MMO's when you enter crowded areas or a new area.

Heat buildup is also a big issue in gaming laptops. My buddies have 3 gaming laptops and they all have to use those laptop stands with fans to stop their laptops from BSOD'ing. This is why I suggest never putting 2 HDD's in RAID in a laptop - there's almost no performance gain, and it doubles the heat output. I don't know if you've ever touched a HDD while it's been running but they can get VERY hot. SSD is the opposite - almost no heat output, and performance is great.

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Originally posted by charlespayne
24hz you kidding? anything less then 60hz and i get huge migranes as the monitor becomes a strobe light.

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You still use a CRT?

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Originally posted by yingxuy
I only had a choice of AMD as the CPU, but I always calculate it as an option. As for the ATI / AMD and Nvidia, and I went to Nvidia's 2 times the day before 2005, I did not impress did not see my screen color is vibrant.

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Been seeing this noted a couple times. There is a Digital Vibrancy option in the nVidia drivers if you want the colors to pop more, I'm pretty sure it's on by default these days to the point that it's more vibrant than ATI. Digital Vibrancy is basically just bumped up color saturation though which there is a slider for in both ATI/nVidia drivers. ~115 is pretty nice on ATI.

Gonna suggest a memtest86+ run. It's easy to do and bad memory can cause the weirdest problems so it's a good test to run first. You can also try disabling the XMP memory profile in the bios to run the memory at JEDEC standards which is a lot easier on it.

My buddy has had to RMA his memory for his i5 twice now, seems to be lower quality control these days :(

Hmm the SSD still sounds suspect. You could install the OS again to your mechanical drive and see if it still crashes, at least then you would know it's something else. Not sure how else to test that SSD for stability while the OS is on it. There's probably something you could do with an Ubuntu bootable CD then run some test on the SSD.

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Originally posted by kuhronusu
i dont recommend the Razer Naga. It's amazing to play a MMO with it but it's not worth the money.
I had one and it last less than a year, double click issue... lots and lots of people had the same problem (google said). 

I would recommend Logitech products over razers without thinking... really razer has a brand with cool itens but they make them cheap on purpouse... they don't have the best price to justify cut offs on build material and quality.

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Interesting, I have 2 friends that own Razer mice that also had issues. One was fixed with a firmware update, but the other still has to unplug his Razer mouse+keyboard and plug back in sometimes. Personally I just don't find them all the comfortable.

I don't actually have any experience with this mouse but it looks ergonomically the best multi-button placement to me, if you really want a ton of buttons on your mouse.

http://www.corsair.com/vengeance-gaming/vengeance-gaming-mice/vengeance-m90-performance-mmo-rts-laser-gaming-mouse.html

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/Catalyst1111aperformance.aspx

Catalyst 11.11a is the best to get at the moment. I had no issues with Skyrim on 11.9 either though, but 11.11a has a slight performance improvement for Skyrim.

Btw, Catalyst version numbers are in the yy.mm format - 11.9 was released 9/2011, 11.11 was 11/2011, etc. And they are updated every month.

For keyboards - I bought a G15 last year, but I didn't like the layout of the media control buttons, which also felt a bit cheap plastic, and I never used the LCD panel. The macro keys are the same height as the other keys so I kept hitting the macro key when I reached for the ESC key. The software seemed a little unstable, and the Windows SideShowGadget app needed to be set to not monitor the keyboard or Windows Media Player would hang.

I bought a Sidewinder X6 a few months ago because I liked the media control layout better and the turn knob for volume. The macro keys are also a smaller and lower height than normal keys so it's easier to avoid hitting them by mistake. The numpad is detachable/side-swappable which makes more room on my desk. Key presses also feel much nicer than the G15 and as close to mechanical as you can get with a membrane. I'd also read the Sidewinder keyboards have the best anti-ghosting in its price range (the more expensive mechanical keyboards like Razer's should have 1 to 1 key circuitry) which was something I still encountered on my G15 because of the weird key combinations I press in MMO's. Downside to this keyboard is there are no kickstands to angle the keyboard if you need it adjusted beyond the default.

Anyway, what I didn't realize was it's the little things in the layout that really mattered to me. Try to think about where you want keys to be when you reach for them, and find the keyboard that matches up with that best. Don't worry about getting the most expensive on the market because it won't help you any if it's not intuitive for you to use.

I have never had an issue mixing ram speeds, and they are *suppose* to work with each other. In the rare event that they don't, you would likely find a BIOS update for your motherboard that improves memory module support.

But your computer is in pretty good shape as is. Is there a specific reason you need more memory? Almost all games can only use 2GB as a limitation on 32-bit apps imposed by Windows, so 4GB leaves quite a bit left over for Windows and background apps. I would get every program running you would have running in your heaviest workload scenario, hit CTRL+SHIFT+ESC, and check the Physical Memory usage % in the bottom right corner. If you aren't above 90% usage I wouldn't throw money at a memory upgrade.

I had similar behavior on a build for a friend. Setup would take forever, just hang at a % for hours, finally installed and was unstable. We thought it was the drive and tested different drive out but same issue.

Turned out to be a bad stick of memory. Lent him some memory while we RMA'd his (they wanted both sticks back) and the replacement memory worked fine.

I would run memtest86+ on it.

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Originally posted by Khrymson

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Originally posted by noquarter
 

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Originally posted by Blazer6992
Find the Consumer Reports magazine or yearly book that has the electronics in it. Just don't get a plasma. 

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Plasma has 0 response time though, which is nice for gaming..
 

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Primarily for gaming though, when used as a monitor to surf the web and read text, not so much!

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Originally posted by Blazer6992
Find the Consumer Reports magazine or yearly book that has the electronics in it. Just don't get a plasma. 

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I've never had a problem just uninstalling Pando media booster, but something could be reinstalling it. You should use hijackthis to analyze your start up programs.. If you can't figure out what's running that keeps reinstalling Pando post a log file here.

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Originally posted by Ridelynn
Nice build.

One thing to mention. Since your doing a motherboard swap, your going to need an OS - that triggers reactivation (that will fail) if you try to re-use the install that is on your current HD from your old computer.

If you have anything except for a full retail version of Windows, you will need a new license/serial number to reactivate. If you have the full retail version, you can call the 1-800 number that shows up when it fails activation and explain you are moving the license to your new computer and they will give you an unlock code to reactivate with.

You'll be doing a clean re-install on the SSD at any rate I assume, but it's just something to keep in mind, especially if your old version of windows was a pre-installed OEM edition (most people get it this way).

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Whenever I've had to call the 1-800 number it's been completely automated - just punched in the code Windows had given me and it activated it for me.

Also, if you are using a Windows upgrade version you're only suppose to use it when you have a previous version of Windows installed, but I like starting with a freshly formatted drive. You can still install it to an empty drive and then set a registry flag to bypass the requirement.

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Originally posted by Nunez1212
Yeah..the price on the WD Black just went up to $150 today! Tha's insane...and I just figured out that the HDD that I have is already a western digital 320gb 7200RPM...and I believe it's a blue version. So if that's true...shouldn't I just worry about getting an SSD now? Though before I do that...this new dilemna does present the question, how long does an HDD last before I should worry? It seems like a quality hard drive, but I have been using it for about 4 years now.
Still debating whether I should get the i5 2500k or x4 or not...most of me thinks the i5 would be the better choice, but the money  saving in me says to go for the x4 so that the SSD is closer in reach.

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A hard drive will last on average 5 years under normal use. But the spread is anywhere from 0-10 years and could even last well beyond that.

I should also add that larger hard drives have higher data density on the platter, which means more sectors pass under the head per rotation, which means faster data throughput. However data density can only go so high on a platter so hard drives also have multiple platters, which helps performance as well by having multiple platters to read from at once. So there are several basic factors that go into a hard drives speed:

Rotational speed of the platter (7200 RPM)
Number of platters (probably 2 platters in your drive)
Data Density (probably 160GB per platter in yours)

So a higher number of platters is good for performance, but so is a higher data density on those platters. That is why a modern 1TB hard drive is far far faster than an old 80GB hard drive, even if both are 7200 RPM.

Yes your WD Blue 320GB is gonna be a little slow compared to a new WD Black 1.5TB. But relative to an SSD those mechanical hard drives might as well be the same because they don't even compare. So I'd stick with the 320GB WD Blue you have and get an SSD (ONLY if you have the money for it, as GPU/CPU are still much more important).

I don't know exactly what you're working with because I didn't read the first few pages of the thread. Usually Quizzical squashes new builds. Personally, I'd go i5 with a GTX 560Ti and stick with the WD Blue if that's what it takes to get there. It would be a shame to get a dual core i3 at this point, and there is just no reason to go AMD at the moment for CPU's - so i5 is the way to go.

GPU wise you really want to push past the mainstream 150-180 bracket before you start looking at an SSD, so 560Ti or 6950 1GB are your options there. I have a 6950 2GB and love it but I'd go nVidia at this point because ATI's next generation is retiring the VLIW4/5 architecture and using a SIMD threaded architecture more similar to nVidia's. Which means games will probably start being better optimized for the type of multi-threaded rendering of that architecture and less optimized for the older VLIW architecture.