This isn't really something worthy of a actual forum post, so I figured I throw it up here on my blogs.

I ran a bunch of tests on my current setup, see specs below:

• Phenom II x4 940 @ 3.514GHz (16.5 x 213)
• RAM: 4GB Corsair XMS DDR2 800 @ 852 5-5-5-18
• GPU: 2x GTX 280 SLI (651/1406/1164)
• MB: ASRock K10N780SLIX3-WiFi)
• Video Driver: 260.99
• Resolution: 1680 x 1050

I then ran the benchmarks of several games 7x, then removed the highest scoring and lowest scoring and averaged out the remaining 5. My first set of data was with my GPUs sitting right next to each other in a 16x/16x configuration.

FarCry 2 (5 runs, Ranch small.): DX 10, Very High, AA 4x, Bloom:

• Avg FPS: 72.53
• Min FPS: 50.08
• Max FPS: 106.19

Metro 2033 (5 runs): DX10, Very High, AA 4x, AF 16x, PhysX On

• Avg FPS: 40.99
• Min FPS: 9.29
• Max FPS: 216.58

Crysis (5 runs): DX10, Ultra High settings, AA 4x

• Avg FPS: 37.23
• Min FPS: 19.52
• Max FPS: 48.54

I've finally grown tired of my top GPU (since they hug each other due to the MB design) running so hot and having the fan run at 75%+ all the time, I changed the PIC-E bridge chip from having the PCI-E slots run at 16x/16x/1x to 16x/8x/8x. I then moved the bottom GPU to the third slot. Then went through and reinstalled the video driver and ran the bench marks again for Metro 2033 with my GPUs now running 16x/8x. Here are the results:

Metro 2033 (5 runs): DX10, Very High, AA 4x, AF 16x, PhysX On (16x/8x PCI-E setup)

• Avg FPS: 40.48
• Min FPS: 8.62
• Max FPS: 208.44

Some of the runs with this setup ran just as fast or faster as some of the runs with my cards in 16x/16x. In the end, the results are within a 2% margin of difference, which means there is no difference in performance.

So, in the end, 16x/16x vs 16x/8x - they pretty much run the same as far as I can tell and as I'm concerned.

I now have to drive literally 20 miles out of my way to get my daughter to daycare due to all the rapid snow melting and the past 2 days of rain and snow fall....

The two main roads I can take (and any other roads across the MN river at my end) are closed due to high water....the roads are roughly 3ft under water right now. This means that all traffic has to be divereted to the main highway - a simply 10 minute drive to daycare will now easily take me 90 minutes due to high traffic and the round-about way I have to go to get to daycare.

This sucks.....the roads will be closed for probably a good 3-4 weeks as long as the rain/snow stops falling. I hate snow.

Why do a lot of people refer to click-happy RPGs (hack-n-slash/point and click RPGs) as "Diablo clones"?

OMG, Titan Quest is nothing but a "Diablo clone"!

OMG, Torchlight is nothing but a "Diablo clone"!

And so on and so forth....

In all rights, shouldn't then 3rd Person shooter games be called "Doom" clones? Or even "Wolfenstien" clones?

Then also shouldn't RTS games be refered to as whatever ground breaking RTS game that came out years ago...and so on for every genre?

Are some people that dense to just consider any action RPG game out there a "Diablo clone" just because the game was developed and designed after Diablo was released?

What's wrong with these people?

Sometimes society just irritates me with how stupid people can be. It makes me want to start slapping stupid people!

I see a lot of posts where people are screaming about how if Intel doesn't get their new CPU out now, they won't buy. Then I hear the same for AMD....

Are people really this hard up for "faster, bigger, better" that they are unhappy that these companies just can't keep up with their speed needs? It's kind of sickening if you ask me. I mean, damn, I'm content that I have a decent PC that plays anything I want without any problems. Sure I like new things, be being so impatient and ungreatful is rather disgusting.

Some of these posters sound like a bunch of crying babies screaming, "I want it now!!!!"

It only took 4.5 days, but my internet is finally restored.

Some damn "internal" issue with Comcast has kept me offline since the evening of 2/5/11. Comcast couldn't get my modem to re-provision. I talked with several departments, no one could get me back online. On 2/6/11, during the evening (after the Super Bowl - Yeah Packers! - of course) I spent another hour on the phone with several people and they couldn't figure out what the problem was.

Comcast sent a tech out on 2/8/11 to try and trouble shoot the issue; he couldn't get us online, but he was able to figure out the reason why. Seems that Earthlink used to work hand in hand with Comcast when I setup my account 6 years ago and it seems that they setup an email account under Earthlink for me and Comcast (both which I never use nor even knew I had). They had to figure out how to get it removed. I was told to call them in the morning and I just got off the phone with them, they were able to get the "internal" issue resolved and got me back online.

What a pain in the ass....as long as they don't try to stiff me with a tech visit charge, I don't really mind. It was more of a huge hassle then anything. Going about 5 days without internet isn't the end of all things....but the wife was pretty pissed. She needed to get online to her email over the weekend to get the necessary sent files/images to do some freelancing work.

Such is life....oh well. Things are back to normal; for now.

Over the past 8-9 months since I was out of a job, I played Aion through a few of those months and then stopped due to lack of income.

With my new job and the part time work I do here and there for various other things, I've got a steady income again and I'm up and playing Aion once more.

For anyone that plays, I'm on the Vaziel server. So if anyone even cares or wants to possibly add me to their xfire list, my xfire account name is FluffyPinkDecoyBunny.

I don't fully understand why, but I just have to do it...

Once a year (sometimes twice) I have to install Advent Rising and play it. I just can't get enough of the this game. It truly is a shame that the developers couldn't hammer out few glaring issues with the game and then follow up with the 2nd and 3rd episodes that were supposed to follow.

I'll just keep dreaming that one day that the series might be completed.

For the past few months (Since a Uniblue update) it's really bothered me that I could not find a way (or at least remember until just recently) to stop Uniblue Registry Booster from running a couple of files in the background without my permission. They'd run regardless of having UAC turned off or on, which really pissed me off more.

The two files are:

rbmonitor.exe and rbnotifier.exe

I went through and disabled Registry Booster from starting when Vista loaded in MSConfig (under the Startup Tab) and I even checked in the Services MMC Snap-in to stop any Uniblue Registry Booster files from running.

So I figured I fixed the issue with Registry Booster constantly running in the background and notifying me of registry errors several times a day.

I powered down my PC, went to bed and didn't think anything of it the next day when I started my computer.....to my surprise, about 30 minutes after my computer was running another DAMN Registry Booster notice popped up in the lower right corner of the screen; alerting me of 12 registry errors it detected and of also a new update being available. ARGH! What the hell?

So I opened Task Manager and I couldn't find anything running for Uniblue and/or Registry Booster. So I pop up MSConfig again and I check through the Services Tab, but there's nothing running in there for Uniblue or Registry Booster again. Now I'm really ticked, I can't find these damn files running, nor did I even know what file names they were running under as of yet; so I couldn't search for the files to try and stop them from running.

I was about to uninstall Uniblue Registry Booster when I remembered that I have Security Task Manager somewhere on my computer. So I open that up and sort all the programs running by current Memory usage and damn sure enough, there were two files running that don't show up in Task Manager, MSConfig or the MMC Services Snap-in tool: rbmonitor.exe and rbnotifier.exe. However, I was denied access when trying to STOP the two files from running through Security Task Manager....so now I was wracking my brain on what to do next to turn these damn files off.

I grabbed out my Vista book and frantically paged through until I came across the MMC Task Scheduler Snap-in tool. Here you can generally find things that run in the background or if you set a task to run (like Defrag, every Sunday at 2am) and make adjustments to the tasks. This is where I found those two damn files hiding, along with the damn Google (Chrome) updater that still runs, even though I thought I disabled it in MSConfig (just like I did with Registry Booster).

I right clicked on the two Registry Booster files running and deleted the tasks. Now they are no longer running on my computer! Yeah!

So if anyone else out there is plagued by Uniblue Registry Booster and the rbmonitor.exe and rbnotifier.exe files running, this is how you put a stop to them.

Nothing pisses me off more when people either A) let their dogs out without a leash and they can't control it or B) the dogs can easily escape their leash and run around....

I was out walking my two huskies just a bit ago and across the street was another couple walking their springer spaniel and some type of cocker spaniel (I really dislike cockers, they're kind of mean to begin with) in the other direction that I was walking.

I was about 150 yards away from them when I heard their damn cocker running up behind us. I kept walking, but the cocker kept following us so I stopped and was keeping my huskies in control. They all sniffed each other when all of a sudden that damn cocker start growling and snapping at one of my dogs. So I pulled my dogs back and stood between my dogs and the cocker. That didn't stop the little SOB, he came up quick and started snapping at my dog again so I kicked the little bastard.

After that it kept about a 15ft distance from us....but it tried to come towards us again so I took a step at it and it ran back. I just glared at the lady that finally came to get her crappy little cocker and walked off.

I wish that little dog came at my dogs and me again; I would have kicked the crap out of it or killed it in the process. Any dog gets one warning from me, along with their owners. After that, it's fair game if my family, dogs or myself are being threatened by someone else's dog.

I used to have 2 GTX 280 cards I ran in SLI. One went bad, sent it in on a RMA, got a GTX 285 for a replacement. No biggie, I can use the 285 and have a slight bump in performance over the single 280 I was currently using.....if that was only the case.

My newly returned GTX 285 was faulty. No matter the clock speeds I set or the driver I used, I was constantly bothered with some nvlddmkm error - which in return caused my computer to lock up or turn off a short time after the nvlddmkm error showed up.

To further my frustration I can no longer return my GTX 285 (nor my second GTX 280 should something happen with it) to the manufacturer because BFG has basically closed doors. So I was about to just shrug my shoulders, bite my tongue and move on with my life when a crazy idea popped into my head.

I spent over 4 hours researching, finding answers I needed and then finally copying the BIOS from my good GTX 280 and then flashing it to my faulty GTX 285. This basically caused my GTX 285 to now think it's a GTX 280....and it WORKED!....much to my surprise and the surprise of others on another forum that was following my posting and idea.

I now run a GTX 280 and GTX 285 (with a flashed GTX 280 BIOS) in SLI and it works!

I finally got around to doing some benchmarks with Metro 2033. I ran everything maxed out in DX10 @ 1680x1050. After a few test runs with SLI disabled, I get roughly 23.46fps. With SLI enabled I get roughly 39.27fps.

Also in 3DMark06 I go from 17.2K with SLI disabled to 19.1k with SLI enabled. I could get better results if I had a better (faster) CPU, but my Phenom II x4 940 @ 3.65GHz works plenty fine for my needs.

I'm content that I fixed my faulty GTX 285 problem. I don't get anymore nvlddmkm errors and I can run my SLI setup again.