you smart person you, you are usually very good at giving feedback on maps. Would you mind giving invertedpenguin some? 

...sorry if you've heard this a million times but I sometimes use F11 to zoom during a fitzquake session and when I cancel the zoom I find that my mouse sensitivity has retreated to about half what I normally have it set at.

Annoying. 

actually, i've never heard that. Is this using the default quake +zoom alias? 

...hitting F11 toggles zoom without me setting anything at the console. 

There are plenty of solid people on this board to give feedback. I haven't been giving much lately because work has been kicking my ass...but sure, I'll d/l it and give it a look sometime in the next day or two. 

This is caused by the default.cfg in pak0.pak

alias zoom_in "sensitivity 2;fov 90;wait;fov 70;wait;fov 50;wait;fov 30;wait;fov 10;wait;fov 5;bind F11 zoom_out"

alias zoom_out "sensitivity 4;fov 5;wait;fov 10;wait;fov 30;wait;fov 50;wait;fov 70;wait;fov 90;bind F11 zoom_in; sensitivity 3"

bind F11 zoom_in

Just extract the default.cfg from pak0.pak to your id1 folder. Then replace the last 3 with your sensivity setting and save the file. Or (the cleaner way) copy&paste the italic text into your autoexec.cfg.

btw: Thanks for giving me the idea;) I'm often annoyed by it, but always too lazy to fix it. 

thanks 85, i guess i forgot about that...

Here's an advanced tip: instead of changing sensitivity, change m_pitch and m_yaw in the zoom alias. That way if you change your sensitivity later, you don't have to touch the zoom alias again. 

I have save my drachma and am in the fortunate position of being able to upgrade some of my computer parts. I know you are an intelligent lot and crave you advice:

ATI Radeon X850 XT - AGP or PCI Express?

Pentium 4 3.6G - which motherboard?

Which motherboard - what and how much RAM?

Sound card or use the motherboard built-in sound?

Advices will be gratefully accepted. 

I haven't had problems with onboard sound, but depending what you're looking for you might want to avoid that.

I'd go PCI-X, it runs at twice (16x) the speed of AGP (8x), and far as I know it's replacing AGP anyway.

Mobos... anything top name at least, can't be more specific though. If you're going to skimp money wise, don't skimp on the motherboard.

The P4 3.6G - depends what socket type. Might this be 775? (guessing). That is a pinless Socket T. 

Check Anandtech's latest PC building guides for good advice on what parts to get. You can probably extapolate the necessary info from those.

But for my own advice:

Go with PCI-X if it's convenient. You'll need a PCI-X mobo, but going this route will give you more options if you upgrade your video card later on.

Try to get at least 512mb of RAM. More is better, and according to Anand, it offers the best increase of performance for each dollar you spend on it. Try to get 1gb or more of RAM unless you're on a strict budget (like me).

The built-in sound will probably be fine for just about anything you'd want to do on your PC. Many on-board sound systems come enabled for digital sound and 6-speaker systems, so it should support any set of speakers you have. Plus it lets you save an extra $50 (or the drachma equivalent) which you can then spend on RAM. 

If your going with that core, the board you purchase will be a 775 and have PCI-X anyways. Remember however, PCI-X DOES NOT offer any advantages over PCI with the current generation of videocards. They simply do not eat up all the 8X bandwidth. Next generation maybe a different story if all comes true in the ATI rumor mill.

I know Nvidia is about to launch the nForce boards for Pentium 4 class cores, so you might want to get one of those as they also will have SLI capabilities.

On board sound is fine, but if you enjoy quailty sound a good sound card never hurts.

RAM should be your second priority tho, only to your graphics card... and even then it's a tight second. Get a least a gig if your gonna be building a system at that level. I have 2 now and it lets my system run Doom3 on ultra silky smooth. 

So is PCIX better than AGP or is AGP still better than PCIX?

Inquiring minds (ie dumbshits like me) want to know. I've got some drachmas of my own lying about. 

For a Doom3 mapper anyways. During compile, memory consumption is somewhere in 1.4 - 1.6 GB range, which means SWAP BONANZA because I have only 1 GB of memory. 

Didn't know it consumed that much (although the editor uses a surprisingly large amount). My 2 gigs of RAM should see me through though. 

Yes PCI-X is a better standard. It has 16X AGP bandwidth. The issue with PCI-X, and the reason I didn't wait for it when I built my rig almost a year ago now, is none of the current generation of videocards even use 8X AGP bandwidth.

These cards as powerful as they are, still don't max out the available bandwidth on the AGP bus. In the future, ie the next gen of cards or ones after that, will probably use that extra bandwidth.

Here is how the 6800 and X800 series cards handle PCI-X currently.

The 6800 class video cards use a HSI chip, which basically acts as a bridge that changes tradional AGP commands into the new PCI-X commands. There is no hit to performance as I said however because of the available bandwidth. There is an article on either Anandtech or Tomshardware that better documents this.

The new X850s came out as PCI-X native products. Again tho, that didn't mean that actually does anything for performance beyond what the core is already capable of. They are now making an AGP version of the card, and like Nvidia, just the otherway around, they are creating a bridge that changes the PCI-X commands into AGP ones.

The real difference between the AGP and PCI-X products right now are, a) future proofing your rig for newer products, and b) cost.

Generally the older motherboards are cheaper, so some have been going the cost effective route and getting P4 processors with current gen cards. 

Great responses. Thanks a lot, I now know what to do. I will go Pent 4 3.6, 2G RAM, the ATI X850 PCI Express, I won't start with a soundboard as I am happy enough with my current on-board sound, use my existing HDs and wireless stuff, and I will now bone-up on the motherboards at Anandtechs.

Onse again, thanks. 

You're welcome. 

Yep I posted before, but now it's on eBay if that matters:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5767521168 

... beer for you. 

PCI Express is PCI-E. It isn't the same as PCI-X!

You can't run PCI-E stuff on anything other than a PCI-E enabled motherboard, so make sure you buy the right hardware - these new graphics cards are PCI-E and won't run on PCI-X motherboards AFAIK.

http://www.processor.com/Editorial/article.asp?article=articles/p2606/30p06/30p06.asp&guid= 

Nice referee guy ! And the related link is very interesting, at least for newbies... ;) 

What's the point of using a PCI Express video card to free up the AGP bandwidth when the only thing that uses AGP bandwidth is a video card? 

It's a New Thing(TM), which means they can Charge More(TM). 

I have (will have) a motherboard with empty slots. I am going to fill one slot with the ATI graphics card. The slot that I do not use will not have anything put in it so it is not the case of freeing up a slot.

The question was simply which is the better version of the card that I am going to buy.

I am not even asking which is the best graphics card as I have already chosen the card I am going to buy. I know some people do not like the ATI cards but I am always happy with them so will continue to use them. There is an old Portrekan saying that says approximately "it is better to share your carriage with a robber you have met before instead of one you have not met before" 

AS described in BlackDog links, there are big differences between PCI and PCI Express performances.

In its best configuration, "standard" PCI is a 64-bit parallel bus which works up to 64 MHz... There is a possible R/W access (without waiting time) each 5 cycles so the throughput is something like 820 Mbit/s... which is never reached in reality (due to PCB delays, interconnects, etc...)... The good feature here is the fact you can plug many peripherals on only one bus.. (there are limitations...)

PCI Express is a point to point differential serial link, and offers a real 2 Gbit/s access (R/W). You can put 1 up to 16 serial links in parallel, which means a real max troughput of 32 Gbit/s !! Here you only have 1 peripheral per serial line...

R.P.G said It's a New Thing(TM), which means they can Charge More(TM): he is right ! The more interesting feature is the low interconnexions required for PCI Express compared to "standard" PCI: you have only a maximum of 4 wires (2 for read, 2 for write), and not 64 (plus ~20 for control !!). At chip level, this means less pins, so reduced chip size, reduced packaging, and thus much more connexion possibilities on PCB.....
In anyway, the interest here is that you can "plug" much more peripherals on your new PCI Express based motherboard (even if you need more serial link connexions) than you were able to do on an old standard PCI based one.. with higher performances... PCI Express really increase motherboard and peripheral access performances... though...