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[Minsc]

so my computer's waiting at home...whooooo

what do i need to do in terms of general maintenance? i have canned air that i used to use on my laptop every month or so. case is a coolermaster cosmos fwiw

A large external drive for routine system image backups, a UPS or battery backup, and the canned air all sound good to me.

I wonder if I was a little more responsible with cleaning my old PC out, if it'd be fairing better now. I'm going to take better care of my new one either way.

What's a good amount of RAM nowadays? What are must-have and some future-proof amounts? What max capacity should I look for in a MB? Thanks.

You can never have enough ram. I was looking at my Firefox last night, and its memory footprint was @ over 600 megs. I'm planning on going for 12 gigs, 6 the bare minimum. It's so friggen cheap too.

 

[TheExodu5]

If you want HDMI audio, you should get the 4890.

Uhhhh, the GTX 275 does HDMI audio as well.

 

[Steve Youngblood]

One more question:

Is a cooling fan something I

a. NEED to invest in.
b. Should strongly consider investing in.
c. Might want to consider investing in.
d. Don't need to invest in.

Pardon my ignorance.

 

[MWS Natural]

If I'm only mildly intrigued (I say mildly because I already have World at War for the 360, and had considered, but never pulled the trigger on FarCry 2) which is the better card?

This chart from the AVS forums breaking down the audio support of PC graphics and sound cards may help you. If you primarily play games you can't go wrong with either card but if plan to use your PC for anything Home Theater related ATI has a better audio solution.

Uhhhh, the GTX 275 does HDMI audio as well.

Although the GTX 275 will do audio over HDMI I it is just rerouting the SPDIF to the video card. It is limited to stereo PCM, Dolby Digital or DTS. Not important to most gamers but those looking for HT usage should be aware.

 

[Lime]

What would be most desirable? Running 4 GB RAM in dual channel mode, or 6 GB in single channel? I'm asking because I have 3 x 2 GB modules, but my AM3 motherboard only allows (obviously) dual channel for 2 or 4 modules.

 

[TheHeretic]

One more question:

Is a cooling fan something I

a. NEED to invest in.
b. Should strongly consider investing in.
c. Might want to consider investing in.
d. Don't need to invest in.

Pardon my ignorance.

Only if you intend to overclock your CPU. I'd recommend it but you don't need to do it by any means.

 

[vg260]

4GB or 6GB depending on whether your motherboard supports dual or triple channel memory.

If you're using RAM heavy applications then by all means go with 8GB.

Thanks. Dumb question, what's the difference between dual and triple channel? I'm assuming triple channel is better. Does that mean you need less?

 

[Pctx]

Thanks. Dumb question, what's the difference between dual and triple channel? I'm assuming triple channel is better. Does that mean you need less?

Triple channel is simply more bandwidth than dual. At this point in the game, it's not a deal breaker.

 

[yanhero]

Uhhhh, the GTX 275 does HDMI audio as well.

Ok, let me be more specific, if you want hassle-free and up to lossless 7.1 audio over HDMI, then you should get a Radeon4890 instead of a GTX275.

 

[rohlfinator]

What would be most desirable? Running 4 GB RAM in dual channel mode, or 6 GB in single channel? I'm asking because I have 3 x 2 GB modules, but my AM3 motherboard only allows (obviously) dual channel for 2 or 4 modules.

Intel's newer memory controllers have a feature called "flex mode" that would let you run the first 4 GB in dual channel and the remaining 2 GB in single channel. Last I heard AMD didn't support that, but it's possible that they may have added a similar feature with the AM3 memory controller. Might be worth looking into, anyway.

 

[ElfoMan]

Hey guys, a friend asked me for help in choosing a notebook/laptop.

He's looking to spend around $1000 or less; other things he would like: 64bit processor, and a nonintengrated video card to play some games. Would be nice but not necessary: 4GB ram and 15.6" or more.

I've been trying to avoid to look into brands like HP and Sony since I had bad experiences, and have looked mainly at ASUS laptops because a friend has one and I've heard good things.

I have been browsing Newegg.com and Bestbuy.com for a while...
and I liked this one: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9366651&id=1218092150636&type=product

He would like to buy it before August because he's a student.
What to you guys think? Any other suggestions?

 

[Shockgamer]

I'm considering upgrading from my older 6ms 24 inch monitor to either a 2ms Acer or LG monitor. Does anybody have any experience with these monitors? Is going from 6ms to 2ms a significant difference? Are there better monitors that I'm not considering?

I want to get a new video card; I have a GeForce 7900 GT right now. I want something better but don't want to break the bank. Is this good? I'm sorta lost when it comes to the multiple card makers.

Finally, I want to hook my 360 up to my PC, I bought the VGA adapter but I don't know what to do with the audio cables. My monitor has no speakers and there's no place to plug them into my desktop speakers. Am I going to have to buy new speakers? I don't want anything beyond a decent pair for a computer desk.

 

[PantherLotus]

GREAT NEWS!
I got the 3850 from Minsc in the mail today. (thanks minsc! i'll get your paypal info tonight).


PROBLEM
After installation, I'm attempting to install the drivers and I'm getting a weird error that says "LOGO TESTING ERROR" or something. I'm going to try again and get a pic of the error. If you guys have heard of this and can save some time let me know.

(I did try sayin "screw it" and skipped the error but had several infinite loop errors and had to start in safe mode to uninstall the drivers. now i'm trying again and thinking this error may be an issue)

 

[PantherLotus]

Now what?

 

[Minsc]

PROBLEM
After installation, I'm attempting to install the drivers and I'm getting a weird error that says "LOGO TESTING ERROR" or something. I'm going to try again and get a pic of the error. If you guys have heard of this and can save some time let me know.

(I did try sayin "screw it" and skipped the error but had several infinite loop errors and had to start in safe mode to uninstall the drivers. now i'm trying again and thinking this error may be an issue)

Yea, I had a feeling it might not be the smoothest thing to setup from what little I saw, but I hoped I just had bad luck. I'm not sure what drivers you're using, but as I remember, the drivers off ATI's site don't work, those are for the PCI 3850. Maybe someone knows better than me about what drivers to install, if you start googling around, you'll find a bunch of overwhelming info, like this 41 page thread, but good luck!

There's this hotfix thing from ATI that seems to help for some people.

Edit: I see that message on just about every driver I install in XP, I always ignore it. I usually image my drive just in case though, before changing anything major.

 

[PantherLotus]

Ok, I went to ATI's site and attempting to download a driver for the 3850 despite your warning, Minsc.

Will update.




(I need your paypal info)

 

[PantherLotus]

Ok, same issue with the DL'd driver. I'm DLing the hotfix now.

 

[PantherLotus]

Weird. Still got the error after the fix, but trying again now. Wish me luck.

 

[Pctx]

You boot into safe mode, clean the drivers and then install the new ones?

 

[PantherLotus]

nothing's working yet. grr.

 

[PantherLotus]

Holy crap this is a nightmare.

 

[kamspy]

One more question:

Is a cooling fan something I

a. NEED to invest in.
b. Should strongly consider investing in.
c. Might want to consider investing in.
d. Don't need to invest in.

Pardon my ignorance.

Somewhere between (a) and (b) depending on what temps you're getting with the stock cooling.

 

[Mr. Enigma]

Okay, so my girlfriend bought a new case. She let me have her old one. I hooked everything up and everything is running fine except for one thing: the on-board audio mysteriously isn't working. Everything's hooked up. Windows Vista SP2 reads it perfectly. It shows up in BIOS. What the hell is going on?

 

[PantherLotus]

Update:
Still don't have it working. Every thread I find links to another thread which has some variation of the following:

1. Try the hotfix - doesn't work.
2. Edit the .inf file - I need help with this
3. Find the right drivers - Which ones are right?
4. Try catalyst #.# (where # = anything over the past year)

Any additional help is appreciated.

 

[PantherLotus]

Oh crap. My power supply is 400W. Minimum required is 450W.

While I don't think that's the reason I never once got this thing working, I do believe it will prevent me from using it. That being said, I've never once experienced something this frustrating with any computer in my lifetime--I spent 9 hours reading through old threads, reading about the zero support that ADP provided for those cards, how Powercolor and Sapphire have had driver issues with the card since day one, and how hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people have had issues the entire time they tried to use it. That 41-page thread was no joke.

I tried every Catalyst Update, every Hotfix, every backdoor method, everything. BSoD or Infinite Loop every time. So god damned frustrating! Grrr!

I have been extremely humbled by Minsc's generosity, and I do want everyone to know he's one of the coolest people I've ever run across on the internet. I regret to acknowledge that I just won't be able to use this--and I wouldn't recommend anybody else doing so either.

I will pay it forward, I'm just not sure how yet.

 

[Fredescu]

Oh crap. My power supply is 400W. Minimum required is 450W.

They usually greatly inflate that figure to make up for the fact that crap PSU manufacturers greatly inflate their own wattage figures. In most cases you'd be fine.

Not that I'm suggesting you should persist. Sounds like a right pain in the arse.

 

[PantherLotus]

They usually greatly inflate that figure to make up for the fact that crap PSU manufacturers greatly inflate their own wattage figures. In most cases you'd be fine.

Not that I'm suggesting you should persist. Sounds like a right pain in the arse.

You think I should?

 

[Steve Youngblood]

No, install RC now and buy the $50 upgrade preorder dealy. Cheaper and you get access to 7 now.

This quote is from a couple of days ago, but is this deal officially over?

 

[Javaman]

Only if you intend to overclock your CPU. I'd recommend it but you don't need to do it by any means.

Especially when CPU prices are as low as they are. You could likely step up to a faster CPU for less then the price of the new heatsink.

 

[Firestorm]

This quote is from a couple of days ago, but is this deal officially over?

Yes it is. If you're a student though you could still grab it in the future for as low as $0 or whatever your school's discount is.

 

[Diablohead]

When it comes to watt power I find that is only when you play games or use big 3D pushing software, running windows and watch most video's will never push a gpu hard enough to need that wattage.

I had a power problem years ago where a new card I brought would reset my pc about 10 minutes into a UT2003 match, buying a new psu fixed it.

 

[BeeDog]

I'm eager as hell to replace my old-ass 12ms LG monitor, and opted first for a Samsung T220, but I was burned TWICE when the models I got had the shitty panels in them, so I returned it. A local PC magazine recommended the BenQ M2200HD monitor, does anyone have any experience with it (link HERE)? It definitely sounds good on paper (no pun intended), but I really don't trust the magazine to the fullest to base a purchase on their review, so decided I turn to you guys.

 

[baultista]

I'm eager as hell to replace my old-ass 12ms LG monitor, and opted first for a Samsung T220, but I was burned TWICE when the models I got had the shitty panels in them, so I returned it. A local PC magazine recommended the BenQ M2200HD monitor, does anyone have any experience with it (link HERE)? It definitely sounds good on paper (no pun intended), but I really don't trust the magazine to the fullest to base a purchase on their review, so decided I turn to you guys.

No, but I have a BenQ V2400W... excellent monitor. They have great customer service and a decent dead-pixel return policy.

My friend has the E2400HD and he says it's fantastic. I haven't had a single problem with my BenQ, but my friend did and he said the service was top notch. I'd definitely recommend them.

The one knock I have on BenQ is their crappy stands. You can tilt the monitor up and down, but you can't swivel, rotate, or adjust height. Furthermore most of of their newer models (even mine, a relatively old monitor now) aren't VESA mount compliant, so you can't replace the stand with a nice desk arm.


Otherwise you're getting a typical TN panel display. I'm not sure if it's wide gamut or SRGB though. With a wide gamut monitor you get these nice, vibrant colours that seem to "pop" off the screen, but you sacrifice colour accuracy. That's all about personal preference. My monitor is SRGB so I don't really get that vibrance, but I like the colour accuracy (no blue ice while watching hockey games!)

If you have an nVidia graphics card you can go into your nVidia control panel and turn on something called "digital vibrance". This basically mimics what wide gamut would look like (a little bit looks nice, but overdo it and your image looks like ####)

 

[big black woman]

whats the pioneer plasma of computer monitors?

 

[TheExodu5]

whats the pioneer plasma of computer monitors?

I'm not so sure it exists.

My goal in my next monitor is to find the monitor with the best video scaler out there. Being restricted to the native resolution (because non-native looks terrible) sucks. A good TV like a Pioneer has incredible scaling.

 

[Crazymoogle]

whats the pioneer plasma of computer monitors?

The Dell Ultrasharp 24" IPS panels, basically. All of the bells and whistles plus a great screen. I imagine the 26/28/30" panels might be just as good, only with larger system requirements.

There may be better looking screens for specific purposes, but the Dell is the sort of overall hard-to-go-wrong-with model.

 

[KevinRo]

You can never have enough ram. I was looking at my Firefox last night, and its memory footprint was @ over 600 megs. I'm planning on going for 12 gigs, 6 the bare minimum. It's so friggen cheap too.

That's because firefox has memory leaks.

 

[TheExodu5]

Why the hell would you get 12GB of RAM without any specific use for it?

I'm still running 32-bit, with only 3GB of my RAM being usable. I keep my computer on for weeks at a time, and I've never even gone over my 3GB alotment. The only time that I came close to surpassing it was when I was running:

LOTRO
2x WoW
PS3 media server transcoding
Firefox with dozens of tabs

I came to like 90-95% usage there, but those were circumstances I'd never even approach again. Usually, I'm sitting around 2GB used.

 

[Minsc]

That's because firefox has memory leaks.

It's also because I keep like 20 tabs open, complete with history and undo functionality, but I'm sure memory leaks are a part of it.

Why the hell would you get 12GB of RAM without any specific use for it?

I'm still running 32-bit, with only 3GB of my RAM being usable. I keep my computer on for weeks at a time, and I've never even gone over my 3GB alotment. The only time that I came close to surpassing it was when I was running:

LOTRO
2x WoW
PS3 media server transcoding
Firefox with dozens of tabs

I came to like 90-95% usage there, but those were circumstances I'd never even approach again. Usually, I'm sitting around 2GB used.

Superfetch? Windows 7 will use your free RAM though, and the more RAM you have the more memory it uses. If you have 4GB of RAM Windows 7 will use more than if you had 2GB.

 

[MWS Natural]

The Dell Ultrasharp 24" IPS panels, basically. All of the bells and whistles plus a great screen. I imagine the 26/28/30" panels might be just as good, only with larger system requirements.

There may be better looking screens for specific purposes, but the Dell is the sort of overall hard-to-go-wrong-with model.

I hear the Dell's are great overall but the downside to the type of panel it uses is higher lag than the cheaper TN that most LCD's use now. Even though I own a 23' Samsung going by Neweggs ratings it looks like LG makes a great monitor.

 

[Minsc]

I hear the Dell's are great overall but the downside to the type of panel it uses is higher lag than the cheaper TN that most LCD's use now. Even though I own a 23' Samsung going by Neweggs ratings it looks like LG makes a great monitor.

But if you buy a TN, you can't see solid colors.

 

[PantherLotus]

Ok, I'm back on the market for a video card.

===========

Case: Mid Tower ATX w/ front USB 2.0 (black)
Power Supply: (400 watt ATX)
Mother Board: Gigabyte GA-K8VM800M | VIA K8M800 Chipset 800MHz FSB DDR400 | with 6-Channel Audio, LAN, SATA, AGP 8X, USB 2.0
Processor: 1.8 Ghz - AMD Athlon 64 2800
Graphics Card: 128 MB - Radeon 8500 DDR, AGP, dual monitor out
Memory: 1 GB - DDR PC2700 - Kingston KVR333X64C25/1G
Hard C: 120 GB - MAXTOR 6L120PO (8 MB buffer, 7200 RPM /Ultra EIDE ATA/133)
CD R/W: 52x32x52 - ASUS CRW-5232AS
DVDRW: SONY DVD AW-Q170A

===========

The old 8500 burned out on me. The Radeon HD 3850 wouldn't work because of driver and wattage issues. I found another 8500 on ebay for like $11 or something, but I'm thinking that another of the same would likely burn out again. Is there a middle ground card that will match my needs (AGP, Age of Empires III, DVD replay, 23" HD monitor - DELL S2309W), available PSU, and under $50?

Thanks again guys. If you recommend the 3650 can you also testify to the quality of the drivers?

 

[Minsc]

If you go nVidia instead, the GeForce 7950 GT AGP would be your best card you can get. Recommends a 400W PSU too, so it's a little lighter, 350W required.

I can't speak to that specific card's drivers, but nVidia's drivers have almost always been much more reliable than ATI's.

 

[MWS Natural]

But if you buy a TN, you can't see solid colors.

Uh...sure? Guess I'll never know with non-TN panels going the way of the DoDo lol. Not that I don't care about PQ but they need to price them competitively or atleast demonstrate the big quality difference you are paying for. I got my 23" Samsung on sale for $160, a IPS or MVA panel of that size is more than twice that!

 

[evil solrac v3.0]

You think I should?

Panther, if you need a video card i have a couple of 9600 GT that i've been trying to sell. would you be interested/ free shipping of course.

 

[PantherLotus]

Panther, if you need a video card i have a couple of 9600 GT that i've been trying to sell. would you be interested/ free shipping of course.

How do I know if it would work in my system? Used? How much are you thinking? AGP?

 

[Stop It]

Panther, if you need a video card i have a couple of 9600 GT that i've been trying to sell. would you be interested/ free shipping of course.

In AGP? I thought only Leadtek even tried to make them and it didn't quite work out. I could be wrong though.

Edit: Panther, why wouldn't the 3850 work exactly? If it was a power issue, I suggest buying a new PSU (And a decent one at that), that way you have a PSU that can come with you in future upgrades and get that rather nifty card working now.

 

[jett]

I'm thinking of getting this monitor for my PC:

LCD Samsung® 2233SW PLUS 21.5" 1920*1080 FULL HD

Any opinions or alternate recommendations? It looks solid enough, that thing is gonna run me about $185

 

[-tetsuo-]

Just got my Powercolor 4890 PCS and it OC'ed to 950core/1050memory no problem. Im getting a new phenom tomorrow (replacing 9750 with phenomII 940 black) and I should be good for a nice OC on that as well.

One thing that weirds me out is that RivaTuner doesnt recognize my drivers. Catalyst 9.6 official drivers dont show up, and it even shows my card as 4800 series. I thought the 4890's show up as 4890's? Or am I mistaken?

 

[evil solrac v3.0]

In AGP? I thought only Leadtek even tried to make them and it didn't quite work out. I could be wrong though.

Edit: Panther, why wouldn't the 3850 work exactly? If it was a power issue, I suggest buying a new PSU (And a decent one at that), that way you have a PSU that can come with you in future upgrades and get that rather nifty card working now.

oh, this is AGP? my mistake. no, i'm very sorry to have mislead you. i didn't know you needed AGP.