New section bans still in effect after like 2 years?

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

I'm honestly not going to flame people... I promise.... can I read the news section while logged in again?

Pretty please!!

[NKrader]

I'm honestly not going to flame people... I promise.... can I read the news section while logged in again?

Pretty please!!

I would like to aswell.. About the same amount of time

[Don_Dan]

We're looking into it.

[l0ud_sil3nc3]

The news sections. . . . never once

[dengyong]

We need something to breath some life back into it.... XS seemed way more active a few years ago.

[BeepBeep2]

^^ +1

[zir_blazer]

We need something to breath some life back into it.... XS seemed way more active a few years ago.

The entire Hardware industry has become boring and stagnant, because the more years you have looking at it, the more predictable it is. You know that the most important events coming from the top players happens on the months of hype buildup before the release of a new architecture or shrink, then you wait for release date, get reviews about how it performs, then wait some more to see how the competency reacts in the form of price cuts, or a new product announcement, then let the cycle repeat itself. Too bad it happens around 1 o 2 times per year, so you are hibernating or inactive at least half of it.
This industry is on decline from the launch of Conroe in 2006 with Intel new management. Intel stopped being the needlessly evil corp that attemped to boycott AMD out of the market, and from that point onwards, they started to actually care about product performance and market positioning. That killed most AMD vs Intel Threads, as most of the fun was teaching ignorant newbies that believe that a 3 GHz Pentium 4 > 2 GHz Athlon 64 about IPC and why we recommended the underdog and its superior products. Then you had Barcelona dissapoint on its release, with the add of the announcement of the TLB bug to rub salt in the wound, then you had to wait YEARS for the next architecture and the possibility that it regains the performance crown. Everyone knows what happened when Bulldozer was released...

[Ace123]

I happen to disagree. the industry as a whole is declining yes, but the gaming/enthusiast market is growing and has never been more vibrant (thats us Btw). I am making an effort to find news bring it to Xtremesystems, and as an enthusiast overclocker I am making an effort for Xtremesystems as well. I Encourage everyone here to do better than I am, and alot of you are quite capable of it.

The breath of life for this place is within you. Do something.

[zir_blazer]

I happen to disagree. the industry as a whole is declining yes, but the gaming/enthusiast market is growing and has never been more vibrant (thats us Btw).

This is THE worst era to be an enthusiast. Do you remember how the enthusiast market was 10 years ago, and why it was so great? Simple: Because there was no market! This was a mere niche for some freaks of the Do-It-Yourself. Indeed, you had some stuff that were what today would be considered enthusiast-class, like aftermarket Heatsinks and some high end Motherboards such the ones that DFI and ABit used to do, but it still was a niche, and you had little to no support to what you did with those parts. Not everyone knew about their existence to begin with. Neither you were bombarded with marketing about products like a Motherboard being "for gamers", "for enthusiasts", "OVERCLOCKING!1!" and all that trash, you had to figure out the true capabilities by yourself, and on many cases, getting such potential involved some modding on product that weren't mean for such uses.
At that time, in order to do all the forbidden things, like overclocking or modding, you required help, and to get it, you had to rely on a community of other people that already tried it, told you the results and teaches you how to do it. The need for these communities aren't as big as it used to be, because doing what oldschool enthusiasts used to do has become extremely easy, reason why even through you say that the enthusiast market is growing, communities like this one are declining. You don't need to know what parts to buy, if you think you're a gamer, you can go to every manufacturer website and you will surely see tons of ads telling you "YOU'RE A GAMER SO GET THIS EXPENSIVE MOTHERBOARD THAT IS MEANT FOR YOU!1!". Want to overclock? You don't need tons of knowledge neither, as you only need to go into the BIOS and raise the Multiplier, or enable some auto overclock option and let it do the job. And you don't usually need to do mods like using conductive paint on some bridge that you had to learn how to identify to enable some Voltage or Multiplier setting, neither. Case modding? What's that? It used to be more popular when most of the cases were the classic gray ATX box. Today you can surely purchase a case that looks cool without having to mod anything, for as long as you want to pay the premium for it.

Why people here like me learned about Hardware? Why overclock was important at that time? Because for many guys like me, budget is always an issue, so if you wanted to have a good computer, you required to know how to get the most bang for your buck. Computers weren't as affordable 10 years ago, and few people had the required knowledge to know if something was good or not, at a time where most people still believe in MHzs. While most Joe Averages purchased these expensive yet piece of trash Celerons, the guy that became an enthusiast would learn about all the possible tweaks to get the most out of its machine, and that made an HUGE difference back then. Knowing about Hardware parts was important because you need to know what to buy and what avoid. Remember when was the last time that the Motherboard/Chipset was important and made or break the entire machine? At that time, with moderate budget, you could do something like purchase a good Motherboard, a good Heatsink, and a cheap Processor like a mere Duron, and overclock it to get high end performance with a much lower budget than the guy that purchased a ridiculous expensive supermarket computer that could bring a 3 GHz Pentium 4 with only 128 MB RAM, on a PC Chips Motherboard with a worthless integrated IGP that whenever you wanted to play a game wouldn't let you because it didn't supported X DirectX/OpenGL version. Same if you knew what Video Card to buy if you wanted to do mods like the famous ones of the Radeon 9000 era. And all that knowledge paid off, because the performance difference was night and day and you saved precious dollars.

Nowadays, the industry is entirely different. Motherboards barely matters, as you could get a cheap-ass Motherboard and its very probable that it performs nearly exactly the same as a super high end one, as you don't have crappy Chipsets nor PC Chips to avoid. Most thing that matters are already integrated inside the Processor anyways, so you can't really go wrong there being Intel and AMD the sole providers of both parts. For Processors, there is general consensus that from a few generations ago, you have more than enough CPU for all your daily tasks, so with a mid end Processor chances are you already have more than enough for everything but ePenis contests (You need a Sandy Bridge @ 5 GHz to be in one!), not even gaming usually requires more than that, and most intelligent people knows that GPU matters much more than CPU for that anyways. RAM is pretty much an entirely forgotten component due to the fact that unless you're with an APU, something that no true enthusiast-class machine would ever have, you barely get more performance out of anything over value 1600 MHz. Power Supplies are fairly overrated, because in the era where all components but GPU are going the way of power efficiency, people still want big 600W+ Power Supplies when probabily a good, 350W one, would work finely with even with a mid end Video Card, as there are no Pentium D Smithfields power hogs around and mainstream Video Cards are quite power efficient. So basically, the only moderately interesing component that can make any meaningful difference is the GPU. And today, the integrated one even suffices for gaming if you're willing to play with everything at low. You see, when I used to be more into gaming when I was a child, my mom didn't had the wallet to purchase all my gaming toys, so if I wanted to play Doom 3 when it launched during 2004, I had to do it at 15 FPS with everything at minimum with the integrated GeForce 2 MX of the nForce Chipset, yet I still enjoyed doing so. Today kids, with parents on the verge of backrupcy, being able to only purchase a low end computer, are much closer of being able to actually get fluid, playable performance, thanks to both Intel and AMD improvements in the area of IGPs, which is where most of the generational improvements are being aimed to. You only need a discrete GPU if you want to increase the resolution, quality, filters, physics, and all those things that doesn't make a game more fun to play.
Lets not forget about overclocking. Overclocking is quite redundant today to be honest. It made a big difference when you could purchase a cheap low end part and overclock it up to the range of its elder brothers, at a time where such Frequency differences DID were noticeable, but thanks to both having more than enough CPU performance, and manufacturers like Intel that artificially cripples the cheaper Processors and Chipsets, you suddently have to go to the top mid end to actually being able to overclock. If a low end Processor possibily is decent enough, imagine if you have to scale up to a Core i5 4570K just to do overclocking. Overclocking suddently doesn't make THAT much sense, because as you already are forced to purchase a top mid end Processor that is more than what you needed to begin with, overclocking it will not be a very noticeable difference thanks to the ever-present diminishing returns. It would be much more useful if you could do it, say, on a Dual Core Celeron, like in the old times (Not even that old, 4 years ago a AM3 Sempron 145 and its capabilities of both unlocking the disabled Core and overclocking it made it an excellent value). To add insult to the injury, not only that Intel is cashing in more for allowing you to overclock, but they do nasty things like disabling features like VT-d on the enthusiasts K parts. This means that for Intel, enthusiasts must be a sort of retarded crowd that only cares about overclocking and games, because if I want to do this, I can't do it on an enthusiast part because Intel thinks that enthusiasts doesn't need such a feature.

Enthusiasts are supposed to be the guys with the knowledge to be the harsh critics about the shape or status of something, be it a product or the entire industry. They're mean to push the boundaries or workaround anything to get what they want, not being mere happy conformist when some manufacturers throws some crumbs at them AND charges more for those. Today enthusiasts, like you when you supported AMD FX-9000 series just because "they are mean for enthusiasts", even through it is conceptually a ridiculous product no matter what angle you looked it for, just fit this meme. They lost everything they had when they let the marketing droids look at them as mere cash cows and choose what products they will consume, what features they get, what ones they lose, and how much they need to pay to get on an elitist segment where now money matters more than the knowledge to use it. Enthusiasts used to know their needs and decide by themselves. 10 years ago, no one told you to buy an Mobile Athlon XP or Socket 939 Opteron 1xx if you wanted to be an overclocking enthusiast, yet people did it regardless (Actually, that should have been against AMD wishes, considering that the 1000 U$D A64 FX was their enthusiast product), with no manufacturer officially supporting such practices. Regardless about if it grown or not (Because only a expensive boutique niche will grow, considering the rest of the consumer industry is going towards integration, cost reduction, and power efficiency), this market is tainted from the moment that all the current massive marketing bullcrap, where everyone and their moms wants to sell products at a premium to enthusiasts, touched it.

[Ace123]

There's absolutely no way I'm reading that book about your non factual opinionated view on why the market sux. What I can and will say to back up my statement is this. Modding , overclocking, and gaming supplies have never been more plentiful, and companies like asus and msi are now gearing a large portion of their lineups specifically at gamers, overclockers, and enthusiasts alike. Water cooling has become almost mainstream, and ln2 pots can be purchased retail now. Computer cases are now being designed and built with overclockers and gamers 100% in mind.

I will stand by my statement, the gaming and enthusiast market had never been better.

[Buckeye]

This thread is about the OP and a few others getting access back, let's stay on topic please.

[Don_Dan]

Exactly. SNiiPE_DoGG, NKrader and josh1980 all got their news section access back.

[KingOfsorroW]

Unban me and I'll post pics of my rig with green clamps. No bodily harm any more! - I promise.

[Ashraf]

Unban me and I'll post pics of my rig with green clamps. No bodily harm any more! - I promise.

Access granted, but please post your pictures in the appropriate section rather than Xtreme News.

[KingOfsorroW]

Access granted, but please post your pictures in the appropriate section rather than Xtreme News.

Haha! Alright thanks. I'll do my best to post it in the Liquid Cooling section.

[HuffPCair]

We need something to breath some life back into it.... XS seemed way more active a few years ago.

Me personally I think my job has worn me out on technology. I am always working behind a computer screen that when I go home I don't want to see one haha, I still play games here and there, but I have been picking up old hobbies like fly fishing and just started getting into rock climbing, plus technology has slowed down. New cards coming out are not as impressive as back in the day, hell the 8800 series was a great time for computers and gaming. Loved that timeframe.

[Kingcarcas]

*Standing ovation to Zir blazer* Hit the nail on the head, i stopped keeping up with things that i didn't even know you couldn't overclock Intel CPUs without the "K" suffix, i was sorta pssst afterword but as you say if you have to pay way more for a qualifying i5 it kind of defeats the purpose. PCChips hahahaha

^ $100 8800GT was the bang for the buck ya i remember that

[demonkevy666]

unbanning everyone might liven up the forums.

zir_blazer I think that post would be better someone else I'm not sure where though :/

[Don_Dan]

We can't simply unban every account, many of them we banned for spamming.
If someone wants his News access back he can PM me or post in this thread though.

[[XC] Oj101]

I think demonkevy666 meant given News section access back to everyone who has had their access revoked.

[dengyong]

We can't simply unban every account, many of them we banned for spamming.
If someone wants his News access back he can PM me or post in this thread though.

You're doing a great job.

[M.Beier]

Exactly. SNiiPE_DoGG, NKrader and josh1980 all got their news section access back.

I know a certain admin will be mad with you lol

[Don_Dan]

I think demonkevy666 meant given News section access back to everyone who has had their access revoked.

Well, we're looking into it...

You're doing a great job.

Thanks!

I know a certain admin will be mad with you lol

No one's mad at me!

[M.Beier]

No one's mad at me!

Clearly you don't know Gautam!