EtherealN

You know a product is good when the founder tried to make them not use his name on it anymore. EDIT: Actually, that video was so filled with expletives from the founder of McAffee that I'll just ask you to find it for yourself. :P Basically, it's a false positive. :)

Here's the thing regarding updating to Windows X for free: Boom, everyone is quickly on a system that runs the latest Windows "store" (like app store etc). It's a method for them to make as many as possible exposed to their sales channel as quickly and easily as possible. That's the "Windows as a service" thing, this includes the sales channel integrated into the OS. (Compare with Google Play etc.)

I'll add one note as well: wattage for PSU's is the total they can produce across all rails/voltages etc. Having components that "only" want 400W does not necessarily mean a 650W PSU can supply it, if they all want the same voltages etc. (This is one of the reasons why, when giving build advice, I always caution against going cheap on power supplies. Purchasing a 100-150€ PSU might seem excessive when there are 40€ PSU's out there with the same rating, but through a lot of frustration and tears I've learned to respect the PSU decision. (And getting an upmarket one is usually fairly fine anyway, since mine came with a 7 year warranty, meaning it'll serve multiple computers without going out of warranty.))

One thing you could see about trying (depending on your level of confidence with overclocking): UNDERCLOCK the CPU and GPU. The idea there is to make them "top out" at a lower power draw than is common. If it works fine at that point, but restarts on standard, you've got a fairly solid case for either the PSU or the mobo power caps being on their last legs (most likely candidate would be the PSU). However, important in underclocking diagnostically in this is that it is not enough to simply lower multipliers etcetera, you also want to ensure that you find a stable underclock that does involve lowered voltages etcetera, to make really certain that you really is dawing less power than normal. Another possibility, depending on your exact CPU and mobo chipset ("i5 quad core" unfortunately doesn't give enough details on that), is to switch the game over to using the integrated graphics and then try running the game. Obviously it will probably not be "playable", but this is something you should be able to do without much fiddling at all. Again the idea is to try to ensure reduced power draw (through not using the GPU). If that works, it would be either PSU or Graphics Card - but the latter should cause BSOD, not restart/shutdown, meaning that we again make a fairly good case for the PSU. His computer and graphics card should throttle themselves if temperature was the issue (unless this has been turned off on purpose in bios/driver), and end result should be a BSOD, not a shutdown.

Just in case, since this is a common mistake: are you attempting to use the transaction number, rather than the serial number?

Mini-JSOW, pretty much. Not the most obvious weapon to put on a straight-winged turboprop, but... It is kinda cool. :D

Back on track, guys! :P

Or is he? :joystick:

Black Sea gets benefits inherent to the graphics API switch, but not benefits inherent to new methods afforded by designing a map with a new API in mind, since this would literally require the map to be re-built from scratch. And as most people would agree, that is time probably best spent giving entirely new maps rather than making a slightly prettyer version of an old one. ;) EDIT: Example: Bad Company 2 used both Dx9 and Dx10 (or 11? Was a while ago, not sure.) It used the two codepaths to render the exact same picture, so the latter would not give a prettyer graphics. But it would give better performance. That's what you can _probably_ expect for Black Sea. But taking full advantage of the Dx11 features would require Black Sea to be re-done from nothing, which Is energy (and money) probably better spent giving you new locations to fly and fight in. :)

Not really a case of "keeping" Dx10, since DCS has never used Dx10. As for what Dx11 does: it not only offers potential performance boosts, especially for systems like yours that doesn't meed minimum system specification ( ;) ), but it also gives access to new techniques that COMBINE the "gain graphics awesomeness" and "gain performance"; that is, with techniques such as clipmaps and others you have additional tools to make things pretty where it matters which would not be possible (or as feasible) in Dx9. A Dx11-compatible graphics card is, however, fairly cheap, and supporting older standards when even Dx11 is actually not too far away from getting replaced by Dx12 doesn't make sense, not when other components technically put DCS minimum system specification beyond what a typical Dx9-limited system would have anyway.

Sticky: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=94531 Does that solve the issue?

Not fully sure I understand the questions. Steam-purchased keys work on the ED distribution just as if they were purchased directly from ED. But yes, to use the ED distribution you would indeed have to download it, same as you would have to download the Steam distribution if you want to use that one. The difference is that with a Steam purchase, you DO have the option of purchasing on Steam, NOT downloading on Steam, but rather using said key with the ED distribution of the DCS World platform. "ED downloads" being available on Steam is a question I don't understand either. Do you mean the modules themselves - then most likely yes, most products will also be released on Steam, but a key purchased on the ED site will not be recognized by the Steam platform, wherefore you will not be able to download it through Steam. Note that you have no risk of losing any disks or anything. Indeed, you can download pretty much everything from the DCS website without even logging in! It is "simply" activation that requires the purchased serial number. (I do not know exactly how this will apply to things like maps and campaigns, however.)

Just to be sure: you are saying you tried the directions given in the below linked post, but this had no resolution to your problem? http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=94531

Well, the microstuttering is a bit of driver-issue (and varies depending on game, since this has to be solved in part as a per-game basis by the driver vendor). I know AMD used to have the issue to a much greater extent than is present now. (Sadly I don't have the time right now to dig up the relevant articles, but techreport and a few other hardware sites did some in-depth investigation of this issue.)

Please file a support ticket here: http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/support/ Your issue will be looked at and hopfully resolved promptly.