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"I need a new PC!" 2010 Edition
- Thread starter Spy
- Start date
ZZMitch said:Ok, so I got the Driect 3D overrider window opened and forced trimple buffering and Vsync on. I am all set now right?
Thanks for all your help btw!
Brain_stew has a good thread about d3doverrider:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=366413
To answer your question:
brain_stew said:
Salaadin said:
yeah I did all that... and WOW.
What a difference. I played the first level of Frontlines (3$ on Steam <3) without this a few hours ago, and it was pretty great.
Played the second level with 3d3 and it is so much better. Everything just seems smoother, my mouse, looking around, it is just amazing.
Thank you so much for leading me to this program
Coming from an old Mac Mini running bootcamp to this is just crazy. And I love it :lol
edit- I just have one question. If a game already has a vsync option, should I disable it or keep it enabled when using 3d3overrider?
PistolPete
Member
Snack/Hazaro - thanks for the 5770 feedback.
I love this thread
So I need a new wireless router.
The one i'm using now is a Linksys WRT54G and it worked fine when I only had my desktop and laptop connected to it.
But now that I have (i) my laptop; (ii) my mother's laptop; (iii) my iPod Touch; (iv) my desktop; and (v) my xbox 360 connected to it, it doesn't work that well.
Especially when I'm using torrent at the highest speed possible, no wireless device is able to connect with the wireless router.
Which brings the question: which wireless router should I buy? At the moment, I don't have any wifi g device, but I might buy one in the future as my laptop is getting old. Bear in mind that it should support several wireless devices connected at once and do that while the desktop uses all the "bandwidth".
Thanks!
The one i'm using now is a Linksys WRT54G and it worked fine when I only had my desktop and laptop connected to it.
But now that I have (i) my laptop; (ii) my mother's laptop; (iii) my iPod Touch; (iv) my desktop; and (v) my xbox 360 connected to it, it doesn't work that well.
Especially when I'm using torrent at the highest speed possible, no wireless device is able to connect with the wireless router.
Which brings the question: which wireless router should I buy? At the moment, I don't have any wifi g device, but I might buy one in the future as my laptop is getting old. Bear in mind that it should support several wireless devices connected at once and do that while the desktop uses all the "bandwidth".
Thanks!
I know this is a day late but...zedge said:
I just bought the XFX 6850 and it did the same thing. As soon as Windows booted, the GPU fan would kick into 70% and never slow down. It's a bug in the firmware (at least that's what XFX support claimed). They provided a GPU BIOS patch and all is well now. The fan adjusts automatically as it should after applying the patch.
Gigabyte should also have the same patch available on their support site.
If it's a batch file (.bat) like mine was, you'll have to boot off of something like a memory stick into a fat32 OS. Go here and use method two to create the USB boot key. Then copy over the folder containing the .bat file to the USB key, boot your PC into the USB key and run the .bat file from the command prompt.zedge said:
YMMV, no expressed warranty, yadda yadda...
luiztfc said:
First of all, have you tried installing DD-WRT or another third party firmware on that router? The WRT54G is probably one of the most popular routers ever released because of how well supported it is by third party firmwares. I'm personally a big fan of DD-WRT, but Tomato was also designed around that router as well. Depending on which version you have, the WRT54G can be a real beast when set up properly. If you're done with it anyway, you lose nothing by trying out another firmware, and you may save yourself some cash.
Having said that, I know the previous poster said don't skimp, but I say skimp skimp skimp. I recently picked up a refurb WRT160N for $30 and could not be happier. Installed DD-WRT right out of the box and have been amazed at its performance. And at that price, I'm actually thinking about picking up a few more and using as wireless bridges instead of buying $30 wireless adapters that will perform significantly worse.
You get more features as you move up in price, but I think a lot of those features are lost on most people. Do you really need gigabit network speeds? I personally don't move around a lot of big files, my primary use for the network is media streaming, 10/100 is more than enough for that. Do you really need dual band networks? For reasons I don't understand 5 Ghz has become really sexy in the last couple of years, and while it has some notable advantages, it has some notable disadvantages as well. Are you experiencing a lot of interference at the 2.4 Ghz spectrum? In my case the answer was no, so one of the biggest advantages of 5 Ghz was a dud for me. If you are worried about weighing down a single network with all your advices, just turn your WRT54G into a wireless access point and have two networks running, one g, one n. Do you really need file servers and printers, keeping in mind you can typically set these up yourself much better than the majority of routers out there can via their firmware? For me, again, the answer was no.
luiztfc said:
DD-WRT and Tomato are definitely better than any other firmware out there. More stable, more features.
The Asus RT-N16 apparently really needs DD-WRT on it, as it apparently sucks without it. But it's one of the best routers around with DD-WRT since it has so much RAM.
Personally, I have the Netgear, simply because I needed a router that would stand up vertically. It is like $50 more though. DD-WRT is in early stages on the Netgear, since it uses a relatively new processor.
coopolon said:
It really depends what you do with it.
There are lots of WRT160N revisions. Some have 16MB of RAM, which won't allow you to have many simultaneous connections, in case you're the type to do lots of torrenting. In those instances, the more RAM, the better. It also only has 4MB flash, so you can't install the full dd-wrt firmware. (edit: you can install the standard firmware, but don't have the option to install the bigger versions which allow you to install more software packages on them...although you may never use such features)
As for the WRT54G...it depends on the revision he has. Revision 5 and later all suck. They cut the RAM from 16MB to 8MB, and the flash from 4MB to 2MB.
I'm not really saying you can't get away with a cheap router...but why not spend a few $$ more and get something with good specs. If you plan on installing dd-wrt, the Asus is around $90, which is nice price for a router with such impressive specs. The Asus RT-N16 is the new WRT54G.
luiztfc said:
On top of immense increases in stability and reliability, you also get tons of features that are typically not supported or only very poorly supported on manufacturer firmware.
Edit: Depending on which version of the WRT54G you're using, you may actually be able to double the RAM with third party firmware as well. Some versions only used 8MB even though 16MB were available, and this would help with torrenting.
TheExodu5 said:
True. I have 32MB in my V3 was not aware other versions had 16MB. I also am not a big torrenter. I guess really the point I was trying to make is that you can get extremely reliable routers that you will almost never have to reset or experienced drop connections from with good signals and throughput for $30. You can pay more for more features, but those features are often lost on people, and then you're just throwing away money.
Yeah I was really surprised how XFX required you to figure out how to boot up and run the .bat file all by yourself. Not a lot of people are going to know how to do that. It wouldn't be that difficult for them to create a bootable .ISO cd image for everyone to use with a simple upgrade yes/no menu.zedge said:
If there isn't any decent documentation with your download, then you need to contact Gigabyte support.
coopolon said:
Well I'd first do what you suggested: dd-wrt or tomato on the WRT54G.
After that, NewEgg has an open box Asus RT-N16 for $65. Darn cheap.
----
As for my Netgear WNDR3700...I've been running it for 2 weeks now and am quite impressed. Still using stock firmware. It has no external antennas, and yet on wireless G (I have no wireless N devices), I somehow manage to get my full 25mbps connection through 2 floors of my house. I really didn't expect such impressive wireless performance through just wireless G.
TheExodu5 said:
I agree, that is a fantastic deal. Especially since the accessories for a router are ethernet cables and lousy firmware cd's.
And even if you decide to move on, you should still install DD-WRT on that WRT54G. You can probably find uses for it other than as your primary router. I currently use my WRt54GS v5 as a wireless bridge for my original xbox running XBMC. Works like a charm and significantly outperforms almost any dedicated wireless bridge on the market today.
Exodus and coopolon, thank you guys very much for the answers.
Albeit not being not too tech-savvy, I'm usually into learning as much as I can from anything and then trying to use it at its full potential.
However, ever since I convinced my mother to buy herself a laptop and try to learn how to use it, my life has gotten quite worse.
For every problem she has with her laptop, she'd call me. And it doesn't matter if I'm working, she'll do it anyway, even at some false premise of danger or something.
All to say that this time I'm willing to take the more expensive, and thus easier, route. If expending 150 dollars on a router will guarantee me that her laptop will always be able to connect to the router (and therefore, to her gmail account), I'm all for it, even if it means also paying for a whole lot of functions I'll never use.
But, in the meantime and considering that shes already having problems to connect to the router, Ill play with theWRT54G. It is at least 3 years old, so I suppose its before the revision 5 and may allow the installation of custom firmware. Can you guys refer me to some internet guide?
Again, thank you very much.
Albeit not being not too tech-savvy, I'm usually into learning as much as I can from anything and then trying to use it at its full potential.
However, ever since I convinced my mother to buy herself a laptop and try to learn how to use it, my life has gotten quite worse.
For every problem she has with her laptop, she'd call me. And it doesn't matter if I'm working, she'll do it anyway, even at some false premise of danger or something.
All to say that this time I'm willing to take the more expensive, and thus easier, route. If expending 150 dollars on a router will guarantee me that her laptop will always be able to connect to the router (and therefore, to her gmail account), I'm all for it, even if it means also paying for a whole lot of functions I'll never use.
But, in the meantime and considering that shes already having problems to connect to the router, Ill play with theWRT54G. It is at least 3 years old, so I suppose its before the revision 5 and may allow the installation of custom firmware. Can you guys refer me to some internet guide?
Again, thank you very much.
luiztfc said:
Just go here, type in whatever the model # and version # are from the bottom of the router. It'll be something like WRT54G(S?) v.#. Then just follow the guide. Typically if there is any jargon the wiki will link to an explanation of that, like 30/30/30 reset or power cycling.
Yes, you can brick your router. But if you follow directions, that is almost never going to happen (and the directions aren't that hard). And if you're already going to get a new one anyway, no loss trying.
If the issues you are having are dropped connections, having to reset the router, etc. installing dd-wrt (or tomato, but I don't use it so can't help with it) will almost certainly help, if not eliminate the problem.
Edit: And v5 gets a lot of crap on the wiki, but I have a v5 I got from someone about to throw it away. I had to install a micro version of the firmware, but it still worked without a problem, doubled the RAM, and like I said earlier, I now use it as a wireless bridge and it works beautifully. I'm sure it would also work fine as a primary router in the most common scenarios as well, although if you are a heavy torrenter you will probably still want to upgrade.
grap3fruitman
Banned
Okay gang, for my PC I bought this Asus PCI-G31 wireless card and I cannot for the life of me get it to work. I've tried the drivers provided on the disc that came with the card, I've tried the drivers off the website and I've even tried alternate drivers by the manufacturer of the wireless chip on the card. Windows 7 x64 refuses to acknowledge any of the drivers and attempting to manually install the .inf results in a "this driver does not support installation in this manner or something" error. I'm at a loss as what to do. I've emailed their support but I was wondering if anyone else had any experience with this card and has been in the same situation.
Yasae said:
Im coming from a similarly old system as well. An Amd 3700+ with 2 gigs of ram and a ATI X800XL to my current build. Im just getting around to installing my games, but everything is better. Can even watch 1080p youtube videos without it lagging to hell. Amazing, and it seems no amount of open firefox windows and tabs and programs and shit will slow anything down. Its crazy. And yeah windows 7 is freaking awesome. I love this task bar where you can hover over stuff and get that little popup window hahaha, makes switching between folders so much better/easier.
opticalmace
Member
grap3fruitman
Banned
Ack, forgot to mention that I did try that and it doesn't come up with anything either. =(opticalmace said:
Preview of Intel UEFI with Sandy Bridge
http://www.sweclockers.com/artikel/12976-forhandstitt-pa-uefi-med-intel-sandy-bridge
http://www.sweclockers.com/artikel/12976-forhandstitt-pa-uefi-med-intel-sandy-bridge
theshizzle
Member
ChoklitReign said:
If you are willing to sacrifice the 6850 for a 460 768mb, you can get this build for around $600:
Athlon II x4 640 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103871
Cheap Mobo + gtx460 768mb - http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.534591
4GB(2x2GB) 1600 Ram + 600W 80+ Modular PSU - http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.549138
Cooler Master HAF 912 + 1TB Samsung F3 HD - http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.543371
Asus 24x DVD Burner - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204
You can even use additional promo codes here: http://promotions.newegg.com/neemai...NEFL110410-_-EMC-110410-Index-_-E0D-_-VGA#VGA
for additional discounts like 10% off any graphics cards and hard drives but I don't think this promotion is going on for very long so you may want to act fast
You even get a free game
spermatic cord
Member
Going to build a computer for the first time. Going to go with this:
http://i.imgur.com/gdc1C.png
Anything changed recently that I should know? I'm going to go with the 1TB
Should mention I want to play Heroes of Newerth at high everything. Maybe some Black Ops at 1900x1200.
http://i.imgur.com/gdc1C.png
Anything changed recently that I should know? I'm going to go with the 1TB
Should mention I want to play Heroes of Newerth at high everything. Maybe some Black Ops at 1900x1200.
brain_stew
Member
·feist· said:Preview of Intel UEFI with Sandy Bridge
http://www.sweclockers.com/artikel/12976-forhandstitt-pa-uefi-med-intel-sandy-bridge
Ewwww.
drhankmccoyphd
Member
Odd question: I can't get audio play on my Steam purchased copy of Bioshock. Googling reveals its a problem with RealTek audio drivers with my motherboard not playing nice with a weird codek they used for the sound. Would setting up my 5770 to pass the audio to HDMI remedy the issue? Would I still be using the onboard audio to simply pass the signal on to the video card? It requires a bit of rewiring of my audio cables so I thought I'd before I gave it a try.
hypothetical question :
Let's say that you cap your games fps to 60fps with the help of vsync of triple buffering or whatever. Will this in the long term cause less strain on your gpu/s than if you would play uncapped and have your framerates fluctuate around hundreds of fps?
Let's say that you cap your games fps to 60fps with the help of vsync of triple buffering or whatever. Will this in the long term cause less strain on your gpu/s than if you would play uncapped and have your framerates fluctuate around hundreds of fps?
drhankmccoyphd
Member
Shambles said:
The chip name escapes me but it's a Gigabyte 770T series mobo. If the video itself is handling all the audio I'm reasonably optimistic.
drhankmccoyphd
Member
Shambles said:It will show up in your playback devices as "ATI HDMI Output, ATI High Definition Audio Device". Make sure you set it as the default audio device or you might end up spending 30 minutes trying to figure out why it's not working
Thanks, is there anything else special I need to configure aside from the default audio device?
This thread is about four billion times more active than the gamer laptop thread so I figure I'll ask the same question here that I asked there:
Hi! I'm considering selling my MBP and getting a windows laptop, but I'd like to take a look at the options before I do anything.
I don't know if I want to spend more than $1000 on a laptop, it depends on how much I end up getting but that's the "initial" budget. Although I probably won't do anything until January at the earliest, is there anything I can look at now to have an idea of what I can get for that price? I don't really know anything about windows laptops anymore, except for the fact that I dislike alienware
Hi! I'm considering selling my MBP and getting a windows laptop, but I'd like to take a look at the options before I do anything.
I don't know if I want to spend more than $1000 on a laptop, it depends on how much I end up getting but that's the "initial" budget. Although I probably won't do anything until January at the earliest, is there anything I can look at now to have an idea of what I can get for that price? I don't really know anything about windows laptops anymore, except for the fact that I dislike alienware
brain_stew
Member
Mairu said:This thread is about four billion times more active than the gamer laptop thread so I figure I'll ask the same question here that I asked there:
Hi! I'm considering selling my MBP and getting a windows laptop, but I'd like to take a look at the options before I do anything.
I don't know if I want to spend more than $1000 on a laptop, it depends on how much I end up getting but that's the "initial" budget. Although I probably won't do anything until January at the earliest, is there anything I can look at now to have an idea of what I can get for that price? I don't really know anything about windows laptops anymore, except for the fact that I dislike alienware
Hmm, I'm not sure I'd recommend it tbh. How old is your MBP?
drhankmccoyphd
Member
Mairu said:This thread is about four billion times more active than the gamer laptop thread so I figure I'll ask the same question here that I asked there:
Hi! I'm considering selling my MBP and getting a windows laptop, but I'd like to take a look at the options before I do anything.
I don't know if I want to spend more than $1000 on a laptop, it depends on how much I end up getting but that's the "initial" budget. Although I probably won't do anything until January at the earliest, is there anything I can look at now to have an idea of what I can get for that price? I don't really know anything about windows laptops anymore, except for the fact that I dislike alienware
Do you dislike Alienware from 5+ years ago? They're a pretty different company since being acquired by Dell. The m11x gets rave reviews pretty much across the board. Maybe start there?
brain_stew
Member
Mairu said:
Yeah, I can understand that. As for reasons to use OS X, well it tends to deliver around ~50% better battery life than Windows 7 and then there's the multi touch support on the newer machines. If I was to spend serious coin on a portable machine, I'd pick up a Mac.
With a 4 year old machine I can definitely understand ditching it, but its impossible to find a $1k Windows laptop that can match the MBP experience in every area.
Really depends what you actually want out of this machine. I assume this is your primary/only PC? How important is gaming? What software do you use regularly? How important is battery life and portability?
Edit: You already have a netbook?
Then get a desktop unless you absolutely can not for some particular reason. A ~$600 desktop will blow away even a ~$1.5k laptop and it can easily be upgraded on the cheap.
drhankmccoyphd
Member
Mairu said:
If you have a netbook already why not a decent desktop to supplement it? It's nice having some gaming capability on the go and all, but you're stuck with that hardware for a few years.
Engadget just posted a pretty favorable review of Dell's newly refreshed XPS 14 which is $899. I'd go with the XPS 15 myself - and if you can stretch your budget a bit there are some pretty decent spec upgrades available.Mairu said:This thread is about four billion times more active than the gamer laptop thread so I figure I'll ask the same question here that I asked there:
Hi! I'm considering selling my MBP and getting a windows laptop, but I'd like to take a look at the options before I do anything.
I don't know if I want to spend more than $1000 on a laptop, it depends on how much I end up getting but that's the "initial" budget. Although I probably won't do anything until January at the earliest, is there anything I can look at now to have an idea of what I can get for that price? I don't really know anything about windows laptops anymore, except for the fact that I dislike alienware
Do you need it to be a laptop, though? Desktops are much cheaper and more reliable - and you can get a netbook for all of your portable needs.
The M11x is the one exception of the turd that is Alienware. They are just as overpriced as Apple except they are a hell of a lot uglier. The only reason the M11X is decent is because of power consumption and form factor, performance wise in its price range it is still quite lacking. You're better off at looking at products from companies like Asus, Acer and MSI.
I didn't know that one of the reasons for MBPs battery life being better than pretty much every single windows laptop was because of OSX, that's good to know. I don't expect a windows laptop at any price to match the MBP experience, but I just don't know that I really need it anymore.brain_stew said:
It's not my only/primary PC, the reason I don't use my MBP anymore is because I built (THX HAZARO!) a gaming desktop at the end of July.
Battery life is somewhat important, but even on my MBP now the battery seems to only give about ~2-2.5 hours of life from full charge. The only necessary programs I use regularly outside of media & web stuff are office and visual studio. If I got a new laptop I'd expect it to play SC2 at a decent performance as well as source games (these two requirements seem fairly easy considering my current ~4 year old mbp does it already). It'd be nice if it could play Diablo 3 reasonably well but considering that's not out for awhile it's not really a big deal, and I still have my powerhouse desktop
Portability is kind of important and while I don't expect a laptop as sleek as a mac I don't want a giant like an alienware either. There's no possible way I would *ever* buy a laptop with a screen larger than 15".
To be honest, the netbook was semi-useful for the semester I got it for, but it's not terribly useful that match. I'll probably eventually get an iPad and have pretty much no need for a netbook anymore unless I happen to need to do some sort of programming in class/on the go that I can't do with my MBP/futurelaptop?.