Ryukrieger

My desktop's GPU died a few months ago so it's just an Intel HD 4000... but on the other hand, I'm using a gaming laptop with the 680M for gaming, if I win this would save me money for a new GPU.

As the title suggest, I'm using the BitFenix Prodigy ITX Case and a bit curious which type of fans I should go with my upcoming GPU purchase, my old one just recently died (yes, after warranty ended) so I'm looking to buy a new one, but since I'm not going to be buying one until the 1070/Polaris comes out, I think I might as well ask this now. And if you're wondering, I'm not going to touch 1070 Founders' Edition...

There are quite a few scenarios, in my opinions. - Really cheap pirates: They pirate games anyway, regardless of them having money or not, and will even play their favourite games all the way, never buying a game. This kind of pirates MAY lead to lose sales, but... gotta ask... would they buy the game if there wasn't any piracy opportunity? - Poor pirates: Maybe they don't have money at that moment and "Damn, I really want to play that game", these guys usually start buying games when they start getting money in their pockets. I think this is where most "pirates" belong to, usually younger people without enough money, who would really get into games and buy heaps of them in the future. - Can-I-Run-It people: A lot of people do this, most "DRM-disabled" games would run similar to the full release, but some can be stupidly bad as someone already said. - Then there's the people who just want to see how the game really is, download number is one thing, but how long are these "pirates" playing the game? 5 minutes then quit? 10 minute? 1-2 hours and never returned? Finished then buy it at a later date when there's a sale? All in all, I believe there are just too many variables to determine the line.... then there's Steam Refund! I know I'm just talking about what everyone's talking about again and again here, but with Steam Refund, those 2-hour pirates may be really reduced.... so some devs can start blaming Steam about it, but I do think Steam Refund is the best way to "combat piracy" in ages, although it's not exactly designed for that.

While waiting, I finished Arkham Asylum once (again), finished Arkham City and Origin twice (also twice on New Game+ for each game) on Hard. I'm very much ready.... although... Australia has to wait till the 24th, though.... 3AM at that... Buuut, sitting here waiting!

No, you will not gain any performance by changing drives, just the loading time. You may want to tune down settings a bit.

I would say now with Steam refund, the only reason for pre-ordering is for some reasons the game has a great discount (20%+ or similar), so you can just get your money back if it went wrong and you scored a discount if the game is good. If the discount isn't worth it (10%, which most games go by), then mostly.... don't pre-orders, if everyone just shy away from pre-ordering, companies will eventually stop and offer something else more attractive. Otherwise, the 2-hour-2-week refund is beneficial... just remember that it applies to Steam only and not resellers. That's my personal stance on this, big discount => you can try pre-ordering, normal price to low discount => there's no benefits in pre-ordering beside potentially having the hassle of waiting for refund and support bad practices by publishers.

I've seen my fair shares of speculations to safely say that... it's most likely that any guess we come up will be wrong. I decided that I won't be bother with Arkham Knight's true identity until I get to play the game. I'm excited for it, nevertheless. Although... I'm not so happy with Warner Bros forcing Rocksteady to do all those expensive DLCs, seeing their latest track records, it's not so bright, but I think I could somewhat understand why, they agreed to delay the game for multiple times, and also have to deal with licensing, that may have added to the cost, not to say Rocksteady wants it to be the best game they could make. Despite that, however... I'm still not happy with WB, GMG is offering the game for 40% off, though. Enough about WB, seeing the latest gameplays, I'm hopeful they'll live up to their promise, considering that it's very possible to spot "console-quality" (so to speak) during the "PS4 gameplay", and they have been very generous with gameplay out of most game trailers I've seen.

My friend who's using Windows 10 Preview says gaming performance is somewhat better than Windows 8.1 or similarly the same, so it will be fine (also there's full DirectX 12 support for W10)

Are you using a custom DNS server? Put it back to automatic If you're not, perhaps your computer doesn't like the one given by the ISP, try using Google's DNS. This is a weird case, my laptop doesn't like using Google's DNS at my friend's or at my college, but if it's at home, it's faster using Google DNS. My friend's brother also benefits from a different DNS than what the ISP gave him. It could be a DNS problem. Try changing DNS, if you don't like Google, then there's OpenDNS, I think. Otherwise, perhaps try to reinstall your network card's driver, something could be up. That is, if the issue is not already solved.

That temperature is a tad bit high, if the error check suggested by Syntaxvgm doesn't return much, I suggest checking your coolings, are the fans gathering too much dust? Fans dying? Coolers inadequate? Thermal paste dying? When was the last time you clean/check your computer? I've seen this happening due to overclocking (not in your case) and heat (also faulty cards can cause it).

As far as I know, the upgrade process will not wipe your data, even if it does, Microsoft did include some sort of backup thing like windows.old or something of sort. On the other hand, if you install the OS on a different partition or drive, you practically have nothing to worry about, even if the OS got wiped, the data will be there and when you want to install the games through Steam again, Steam will just check the existing files. So, most likely your data will remain intact, if not, it most likely won't be affected in a large extent.

I've dealt with them before, they're really good. Unfortunately, this is in their FAQ Q: Do you ship internationally? A: At this time we only ship in Australia Unless you're taking a vacation in Australia, you have no hope buying it from here. If you are and will buy it here, I would suggest just buy it somewhere you can get warranty in, even if the store is good, bad luck can still get you.

I suggest waiting for the AMD's new releases and check them out before buying. And on the other hand, the 290X is still a very powerful card, if Nvidia and AMD are to be believed, the next generation after this will be the "leap", of course... not that they could be believed so easily, but I'd say that for now, hold off on 4K, I believe 30-50FPS is what seem to be the average FPS for many 4K games at the moment with a single powerful card, not that worth it. This is in my opinion, of course.

It sounds like none of the part is receiving any power, perhaps the Power Supply is dead/faulty, if you know someone you can temporarily borrow a power supply from, you can test theirs to see if it's the PSU. If you have fans that are connected to the PSU, this is even more likely the case. If it's not the PSU, then I think it would be your motherboard that is damaged. I may also missed something, but that's all I can think of at the moment.

You're welcome! I hope they'll reply soon, it is indeed a weird bug.