Yesterday we started the discussion on what the next benchmark should be. We have a few ideas but nothing certain on what we will do so again we welcome ideas on what everyone would like to see.

We also had some talk about smaller monthly competitions that would include a broader range of participants. I think this would interest a lot of people, however since we would not be pushing our systems to the xtreme the prizes will obviously be smaller and these contests would more than...

It all started late summer of 1999. I was playing online for the first time in a game called Motocross Madness. While playing I talked with a guy who invited me to play a new game called Counter-Strike. So I went to the store and purchased Hal-Life for 9.99 at Office Depot and installed it and downloaded CS for the first time (I think it was beta 5.5 at the time). At the time we only had dial-up so it took a while. Basically I had to download it overnight.

The next day I installed...

I thought it would be a neat idea to blog about being an Editor here on OCN. Since I am a Benchmarking Editor I can only cover that, but I hope it will be interesting none the less.

As most of you know I help run the Benchmarking contests. That usually involves a couple months of discussing different ideas for the contests long before it actually takes place. Then we have to get approval for the prizes for the contest (of which admin is VERY generous) and then setup the structure...

The Re-Birth

Since the last blog post about my system I have gone through alot of changes. First was the motherboard swap to the new ASUS M3A79-T Deluxe. I then added a fourth Sapphire Toxic 3870 and attempted to upgrade my PSU to a Corsair 1000W. However the PSU turned out to be incompatable with the board. So I ended up selling the Corsair and getting an Ultra X3 1000W PSU instead. At the same time I replaced all four of my Sapphire Toxic 3870's with three Visiontek 4870's and...

POWER, MORE POWER

Well as it turns out the problem that I talked about in Part 3 was not specificly case related. It just so happens that it is Power Supply related. I guess in a sense it has to do with the case since there are more fans in the case and they are more powerful. So they are sucking just enough juice to deprive the CPU it's necessary diet. With that being said I decided to embark on trying the Dual Power Supply tactic.

The Hookup

Hooking up...