Make sure she has Windows 7/8, XP's support is supposed to expire next year.

I can attest to this

That was supposed to be for the flank

Any reason why you can't get a desktop and a cheaper laptop?

Regarding your question, it actually doesn't seem that great. It seems like you can generally get better performance from just the Ivy Bridge CPU with its built-in Intel HD 4000 Graphics, so it would make more sense to not include discrete graphics in the first place from a manufacturing standpoint. In addition, that CPU seems clocked a little low for gaming, but it seems to meet the requirements for CSGO.

but i love your 13 year old voice

Start: December 26th, 2010*
Days to present: 1,050
Total hours: 2,042
Equivalent days: 85.6
Average hours/day: 1.94

* My brother gave me his Steam account for Christmas in 2010, and had only played 13 hours. Taking that into consideration:

Start: December 25th, 2007
Days to present: 2,147
Total hours: 2,055
Equivalent days: 85.6
Average hours/day: 0.96

Alpha 3 is now out!

Downloads:
BSP: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31103105/Maps/koth_warmfront_a3.bsp
BZ2: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31103105/Maps/koth_warmfront_a3.bsp.bz2

Changelog:
-Added back the small cliff packs.
-Switched mid cliff packs to mediums.
-Adjusted the cliff so it goes straight down to the platform. A house replaces the rock next to the cliff, and takes over part of the old cliff area.
-Adjusted clipping on the left route going to mid.
-Removed a stray icicle.

did you really need to quote the whole thing

or at all

I've heard good things about Snowballs, but I'm not sure if they're worth the price. I think they're on sale fairly often though.

Personally, I use the Modmic v1 attached to my monitor. It seems to work well, haven't heard complaints that I'm too quiet. The Modmic v1 is discontinued though, and the v2/3 are discontinued also; they had many problems with those two. The current model is the v2.3, which is basically a v2 that looks like a v3. The v4s are coming out (hopefully) next year. Also, it's designed as a headset mic so it may not be ideal.

Honestly, you could really just use the Zalman clip-on mic for ~$5, but I assume you want something sep

Did you make sure that your ESEA time is correct, both the timezone and DST unchecked? I assume you did, but it's good to check.

This affects anyone who ever used Xsplit at any point in time.

Well, I guess if you pirated it, it might not affect you... but if you did that after OBS got game capture, then you just wasted time.

You don't need to anymore, there's a way to get it working with AMD cards now: http://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-Strobelight-LightBoost-Utility-for-AMD-ATI-and-NVIDIA?page=1

If you want to use G-Sync, however, you'll need an Nvidia card. Although if you buy the monitor now, you'll need to add the G-Sync board yourself.

This is my current build, I'm looking to upgrade some things.

CPU: Intel i5 Ivy Bridge 3570K (clocked at 3.4 GHz) (stock cooler)
RAM: G.SKILL Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1866 RAM
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme4
Video Card: HIS H687F1G2M Radeon HD 6870
SSD: OCZ Agility 3 120GB
HDD: Maxtor 320GB
Monitor: ASUS VG248QE
Secondary Monitor: Envision H19W (it's VGA only...)
Earbuds: Astrotec AM-90
Microphone: Antlion Modmic v1
Mouse: Razer Deathadder 3.5G (1800DPI)
Mousepad: Razer Goliathus Control Alpha Large
Keyboard: Dynex Wired Keyboard DX-WKBDSL
Webcam: Logitech HD Webcam C270

I might overclock my CPU.

For the record, BF3 and Arma 3 are only playable on the lowest graphics settings.

Also, I just want to note on i5 vs 8350 that they're good for different things. If you just want to play TF2, go with an i5. If you want to stream and play games such as BF4, consider the 8350. A few years from now, AMD will probably be the best option overall.

You can also +/-frag yourself. It's odd, but it's there.

Speaking of frags, I still think they should be removed because they serve no real purpose but to discourage opinions. You could argue that they remove "I agree/disagree" and stupid comments in general, but I think TFTV would benefit if we couldn't just ignore posts based on the color of their frags. Removing colored names altogether also reduces this problem a little bit.

I would also be fine with removing post stars. There is even less meaning to them than frags.

Also, change the sidebar icons. They've looked weird since TFTV switched from the gotfrag replica theme.