unreal25

Hm, well my guess is that GPU drivers are still not working (properly). Mainly because you wrote "I do feel like I might notice it also in regular window functions, like a random quick little hitch and things arent opening, minimizing, expanding as smoothly as they once were.". I remember this happening typically when you use windows generic "Standard VGA adapter" drivers. Drivers from the Dell website might not be the newest, but pretty much always they work fine (I am guessing they test them) so I'd try those.

Hey, welcome to T|I! Few questions: - Did you try latest drivers from the Dell website? - What are the GPU(s) you have? - Did you make sure you're on High Performance / Balanced and not on some power savings power plan? - Can you show us the for example HWInfo64 screenshot (or whatever where you can see GPU clocks) when you run a game? Thanks!

Sadness... [from slickdeals.net]

Yeah mine was embedded on the mainboard (9600 gs seems to be a dedicated card) so I think you should be fine. That said, you could take a look whether its possible to upgrade to a better card, e.g. here they mention asus g50vt-x1 video card upgrade? it is possible to upgrade to GTX260M. Just FYI.

Yeah, my impression was that the only downside to ICD were possible scratches, but then again... I am not sure exactly to what extent would that matter if you keep repasting over the longer period (+ I imagine ICD also needs to be reapplied less often). For folks who are worried about the scratches, going with the other paste and having few degrees higher temp is an alternative. I use AS5 (GPU die) and MX-4 (GPU memory), as MX-4 was a bit thicker and worked well after I took out the original cooling pads (like suggested in the M17x-R2 modding thread).

TBH, it's not like your post was less "NBR type". (Regardless or not he was right or not.) @OP, you might find this thread interesting: http://forum.techinferno.com/general-notebook-discussions/913-ic-diamond-24-survey-results.html and Tuniq TX-4 vs ICD(-24) results here: http://forum.techinferno.com/general-notebook-discussions/815-innovation-cooling-ic-diamond-giveaway-survey-6.html#post11083

Yeah sounds like a dead (or dying) GPU. I had very similar issue on Dell XPS m1330 which had an older nVidia 8600gs.

What's the graphic card model?

Pft, now I am in the mood for some Milka milk chocolate.

From Eric G blog: M18X R2 GPU options:2x Radeon HD 7970M (CrossFire) 2x GeForce GTX 675M (SLI) GeForce GTX 660M

Same, Battlestar Galactica was awesome. (I enjoyed it more than Star Trek.)

Marked with [unreal's Stamp of Approval] !

Yeah, same here. I think that's the lowest fan setting.

Hey whatsup, I am using AMD drivers (I think 11.10) on my R2 and they work fine.

I did hear lots of positive feedback about Razer Deathadder. But my experience with Razer products was somewhat bad. And keep in mind, I have had and used really a lot of their products: Razer Mamba mice (bought two), Razer Lycosa keyboard (they were two most expensive mouse/keyboard I could buy at a time, so we are not talking about cheapest stuff), Razer Megasoma (their most expensive mousepad), Razer Goliathus (which is cheap but btw quite nice) and Razer Destructor (probably their best surface), Razer Kabuto (meh mouse pad, attracts so much dust) and Razer Moray (quite nice earphones). My friend still has Destructor and I think he had no complaints. The best think I like about mamba is comfort which is much better than Logitech G7. Btw I had the exact same bug with Mamba. The cursor gets stuck to only vertical movement. Interesting. My friend from Europe had some experience with Roccat headphones and their gaming mouse and they seem OK so Roccat may be worth checking out. The only reason I highly recommend logitech is because I just used their stuff for SO long basically since I had my first computer I used Logitech mice. It's just when I was shopping for mouse they did not have laser wireless mouse. (G7 went out of production and nothing similar came in until a while.)

Logitech stuff is generally pretty good. I still use their G7 mouse and have had and used their mice and keyboards for last 10-15 years or so. To compare I've used Razer stuff and keyboard started getting worn out after 2 months, the mouse surface got permanently stained on the inside with ink (wtf?) and their "imba" $150 mouse died as well. So yeah, Logitech ftw.

For me its easy... I can't stand the taste of most of the soda in the US, so I don't drink them. (I think the root beer is the only thing I like.) The different kind of sugar they use just spoils the taste tbh. So I am often on the orange juice.

For life? Congrats! Btw, welcome.

Absolutely love this one:

OMG free calculator!

Yeah, the beginning of the game is awesome (the story is great and the first instance is fantastic) but it drops down a bit as you progress through the game and just becomes so incredibly similar to WoW, it's not fun. At least on the Empire, the quests on every single planet are like fighting the rebels. I don't get why they copied SO many things, it would be much better if they put more original things even if they weren't as good. If I hadn't played with my friend I think the grind would have killed me way before. I am currently almost (1 bar away from level 49 Bounty Hunter). Basically here are my thoughts: - the story is amazing at beginning of the game but waters down a lot as you level through the game - the quests become very repetitive, even character responsive become so predictable i already know if I press 3 at some point that the character always says a generic statements "Let's get to the point" - for Bounty Hunter, 1 out 6 companions on Empire side are evil (what the f...?) - PvP (if you want to call it that way) significantly behind WoW, since WoW right now has a lot of other interesting mechanics such as vehicles - space missions a joke (Wing Commander 1 from 1990 is light years ahead of this), even though the engine looks pretty cool and seems to have a lot of potential - not open world - all characters look very similar (compare to GW2 or even WoW and you'll know what I mean) - so many bad things copied from WoW its not even funny (e.g. why not copy quests from Fallout?) - to level properly you either have to: 1. do space missions (very arcady and shitty), 2. do grindy bonus missions on each planet or 3. do instances (WoW style but for 4 instead of 5 people) - annoying to be able to keep going either purely Light or Dark side (Dark side really purely evil, Light annoyingly good) - I started leveling alt but there is always just one planet for each level range (and except for the first, they are recycled on Republic side) and you can't choose, like in WoW, to level a certain range in a different zone, so it became repetitive Also note I am in the guild with my old WoW friends and my 2 RL friends, and with one I pretty much leveled all the time together.

Hey Steven, You still playing SWTOR? I just cancelled my subscription but have 7 days left, so I'll be able to finish my class story and ding level 50. (Almost 49 now.) Got really boring and WoWish for me. What are your thoughts?

lol.... I think that its an interesting feature, but useless for regular use. I used Siri for 5 minutes or so, and it had lots of trouble recognizing even the simple words, unless I spoke REALLY slowly (and my accent is not that bad). It's still very long way from the Star Trek computer.

So simply put, let's say you want to connect with Windows Remote Desktop Connection to my M17x laptop which is connected to my local network (as well as 2 other computers) and then to the internet through the network router. The only thing that is visible for anyone on the internet directly is my router. So if you want to do Remote Desktop on one of my computers you can't access either directly, you can only get to router and then the router somehow has to know what do you want and to which computer that information has to be sent. So you basically connect to my router to a certain "port" -- it's not a physical plug, but rather a number representing an abstract "port" (it has to do with the organization of network structure of the internet). The router then has table which says something like "if you receive a request on port 3389, send it to a computer in local LAN on the local IP 192.168.1.2." and lets say my M17x has that local IP. Then you can connect, using my router as an exactly what its name says a "router" to route all data you send with a mark "port 22" on computer with IP 192.168.1.2. Port forwarding is typically needed also if you want to play a game with your friend over the internet directly, without using intermediate servers. (In that case, one player hosts the game -- a server, and another player or players connect -- clients.) If you're really interesting you should read some beginner book on TCP/IP. "Cool stuff, bro."