Dusty Chalk

Google "FSB vs. QPI", it's pretty interesting.

(shrug) It's what he said he wanted. I'm not going to argue with anything you said, because it all makes sense.

Feel free to use this thread to discuss anything kitty-related. There are several of us here who love cats, and those that don't can just ignore this whole thread. I just told my sister to send me another cat.

That said, being SLI-ready doesn't need to be expensive. One could certainly go to NewEgg and click "Nvidia" and "SLI-ready" and "<US$100" (and "HDCP-compliant" and whatever else one wants) and come up with quite a few choices.

Jarvi, Rite of Spring, SACD

My dentist is a male, so though he may be hot, he's not my type.

Man, some of those oral hygenists are so hot. (wanders off to make an appointment)

I fucking hate crickets. This one time, one went off right next to my head; the next morning, a potted plant was on the floor when everyone woke up.

No! He's using the case as a heatsink; if anything, redo it so that it is heatsunk more appropriately.

Woo, pick your poison.

That kid looks like the kid who...HOLY SHIT IT IS! He's EVERYWHERE!!!1!onoes! Must be Jesus' 2nd incarnation.

Yeah, go ahead, I just emailed Ivy (hey, it was her email that's on the measurements page). And yes, since headphones are their specialty, I tend to expect Headroom's measurements are the more accurate, but I didn't expect Stereophile's to be wrong. But luvdunhill's thought on head-vs.-no-head might be a legitimate one. I'd be curious if there's anything to that.

That EVGA is complete overkill, so that would map to the "top end" as Billy put it. Not that there's anything wrong with complete overkill. The 9800 series is pretty much the sweet spot in bang-for-the-buck these days. I would get one with more memory if you're going to be doing video. I guess the real question is (because this is the deciding factor with video cards) -- are you going to be doing any gaming on this deck? It's usually gaming for which you want anything beyond an entry level video card. There's a couple of other pieces of software that will utilize it, not sure what CAD software you are referring to. Please specify so that we can look it up, 'cause that might be one of them.

John Atkinson did, indeed, specifically say that they were on his head when he measured them. Which is fair. Whether or not that corresponds to free air is left as a judgment on the part of the reader. I suspect it would be closer to a dummy head than to free air (and vice versa [i suspect Headroom's dummy head would more closely reflect normal real-world listening situations than free air]), myself. Whether or not actual impedance was measured while on the dummy head in Headroom's measurements can only be ascertained by Headroom.

At this point definitely go i7. There is no FSB because it's basically all asynchronous direct memory accesses -- they've replaced the frontside bus, essentially (oversimplification, but will do for the purpose of convincing Billy). Asus P6T motherboard is perfectly adequate. Look up reviews. Let me know if you find any reviews that says, "is better than" in front of "Asus P6T". Max out on memory. Make sure you get one that matches the capability of your CPU and motherboard, so that it isn't the bottleneck. 50 inch LCD monitor? You mean you're going to use a television as your monitor, right? Because the largest monitor I've seen is 30 inch. 1080p is easy, practically anything current (graphics-card -wise) will do 1080p. < US$100 Nvidia's constantly go on sale at NewEgg. I'll let others answer the Raid question, as I haven't been following that at all. One thing I will say is someone mentioned to me that they wanted to Raid their OS disk not for safety/security/backup reasons, but to go faster. After they explained it (you're essentially hooking up the drives in parallel so that they act as one big multi-platter drive array that can deliver data amongst the "platters" simultaneously and independently at the same time), I could see how it might be a good idea in that particular scenario. I know this is not where you're coming from, but I thought I'd mention it if it interests you. Fans -- don't skimp on cooling. Overclocking is one thing yes, but lots of video and music == lots of disk access, you want your hard drives not to burn up neither. Especially if you're Raidin'.

Yeah, that's it -- a "Prince Albert".

Yeah, 'cause if anyone had a ... whatever that thing is called when the penis has a piercing ... that would su-uck. Of course, maybe he does, and maybe that's why it is on the top door.

I disagree, it was refreshingly honest to hear him say, "I don't know". Sure, like he's going to say anything other than that he knows what he's talking about. Alright, maybe he'll say something to the effect of John Atkinson does not know what he's talking about...with more or less diplomacy, I'll not say which. That said, the statement was based on his measured impedance phase -- if it turns out to be completely different, he may change his tune. Hey, Dr. Gilmore -- do you have the capability to measure the impedance and impedance phase? It'd be nice to have a tiebreaker.

Ravel, Jarvi, SACD

I think it's because you started that thread. I'm not sure I want to know what that says about me that I know how to think like him.

Ah. Thanks.

I don't know -- that third one looked just like your old avatar. "M&P"?

It could translate everyone's posts into Billy-speak. And then we could fix it.

No. I changed my post to show Headroom's plot, but the HD800 is in the current issue of Stereophile, so it's not online yet. It's on p. 89 of the orange-framed issue with a Boulder device on the cover. The phase is really mild -- I don't think it strays more than 15 degrees. I can attempt to describe the impedance plot verbally: there's a peak at 100 Hz, but the peak is at 310, the minimums appear to be at 210 (starting at 10 Hz, and another swale around 1.1kHz-1.4kHz), and then slowly going up again, to about 300 @ 50kHz. You can look around the Stereophile site, or check Audio Asylum -- I think he posts there, there might be some discussion, I don't know.