PC Discussion Thread - All PC related in here.

[Shashman 0]

Core 2 Duo E6850 is better than the Core 2 Quad Q6600. If you're gonna go quad core, you may as well go Extreme, which is the only quad core processor which offers a better performance.

[echo1 0]

Its slightly faster, but the difference is negligible and in a year or two when multicore software is more prevalent, you'll be glad to have the extra two cores instead of a few more megahertz. Besides - you can always overclock.

[Shashman 0]

Its slightly faster

You said it yourself really...

Think about it; You've spent that much extra to have z0mgQu4dc0re when a good Core 2 Duo, cheaper, performs better. Goes to show that all you're buying, is the 'quad' label.

Just take a look at the CPU comparison charts on Tom's Hardware and you'll see.

[NeMeSiS 11]

Its slightly faster

You said it yourself really...

Think about it; You've spent that much extra to have z0mgQu4dc0re when a good Core 2 Duo, cheaper, performs better. Goes to show that all you're buying, is the 'quad' label.

Just take a look at the CPU comparison charts on Tom's Hardware and you'll see.

But the Q will perform alot better in games which use those cores, so if you look at the future it may be better to get the Q, but maybe its still to early for that, noone really knows.

[echo1 0]

And as I said, you can easily overclock the difference or at least most of it. A few extra megahertz isnt going to make your game run any faster, but if you have software that can make use of all those cores - the performance increase will be dramatic.

[wex-q 0]

The Quad Core gets about the same performance in games, probably since the games aren't optimized, but when going for optimized software, the difference between Quad and Dual is that the Quad does it twice as fast.

So, go Quad if you're doing alot of movie-editing, picture-editing, 3D, animation and so forth, where you use optimized hardware, but for gaming, you can save half the money on buying the Dual Core.

Comparing E6750 with QX6850 (charts on this page and forward)

Two images to summarize:

[echo1 0]

A Q6600 and a E6850 are almost the same price (~€250) I'd rather have future proofing as opposed to a small immediate gain.

[wex-q 0]

Yeah, I was kinda' suprised when I saw the prices between E6750 and QX6850, where the DualCore lands at approx 200 euro, and the QuadCore lands at a whooping approx 1000 euro.

5 times more expensive for almost no better performance in everyday use?

Nah.. Maybe if you really need it for optimized, or got alot of money.

But the Q6600 is a good buy, only a bit over the E6600, and as you said more fututreproof!

[Heatseeker 0]

Tbh i dont think Quads are future proof, i doubt you will find any software taking advantage of their architecture any time soon (if ever).

I've read about them being very hot and not o'clocking as well as the duos so i think a stable duo @ 3.0/3.2 is a far better option.

Save your money and invest in other parts?

On a diferent subject i've read something about DX10.1, and most notably it not being compatible with DX10 HW .

Anyone know anything about this?

[chris330 0]

Sorry to have to ask this here but a mod locked my thread and told me to post my question in here

I have recently (after a recommendation) bought an ATI Sapphire X1650 Pro of the AGP type. My 5 year old motherboard has an AGP slot which housed my old graphics card a Radeon 9600. Problem is although the new card physically fits the slot on the motherboard, the computer rejects it by refusing even to start up when it's fitted.

The full title of the new card is as follows:

X1650 Pro 512Mb DDR2

Is it possible that my 5 year old motherboard is simply not compatible with this new technology? I'm getting a new computer in the near-ish future so the card will still find a home just wondering if there's anyway to make it work with the present motherboard?

Would appreciate any advice cheers

[Shashman 0]

Copy and pasted my post in that thread :

Quote[/b] ]It's highly doubtful that your 5 year old motherboard will have a PCI-E slot.

If I were you, I'd wait til you have this new PC to get a better graphics card. No matter what graphics card you were to get now, your CPU would cause a bottleneck, i.e the power of the new graphics card would be lost as your CPU wouldn't be able to keep up.

Save the money, endure your current performance woes until you get your new PC, and use the saved money then, to get a better graphics card.

[Heatseeker 0]

It was a bad recomendation on that agp card when you are already planning to build a new pc.. anyway we cant guess without knowing the mb model.

[chris330 0]

Ah shashman sorry I never saw your reply in the other thread. Thanks for the advice lads.

[maatz 1]

So, go Quad if you're doing alot of movie-editing, picture-editing, 3D, animation and so forth, where you use optimized hardware, but for gaming, you can save half the money on buying the Dual Core.

yeah, thats what i will use it for. mainly movie-editing etc, but of course ArmA, too.

but what about the graphics card?

i use to have a Sapphire X1950XTX, but it needs too much power imho... so i want to build up a totally new pc system?!

so has anyone good experiences with the ATI RADEON 2600XT???

[echo1 0]

No, but Ive read reviews of them... apparently theyre very much underpowered. What about something like a 7950GT or an 8800GTS?

[-Snafu- 77]

If anyone has a laptop as their primary game rig then I discovered this little gem here:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/noteboo....p13

This is the main site:

http://www.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=5369

This is a very tasty solution for me. It can turn your laptop into a decent bit of kit provided you have a good processor and substantial RAM.

On my laptop I have a Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 1.66GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive and Vista Premium. I'm sure my laptop could benefit from this however would my processor be a bottleneck if I were to get one of these things?

Moreover do you think we will see a DX10 card in one of these?

And what about graphics drivers? How would this work?

[chris330 0]

Hi,

Following from my earlier question I have a new question! I won't start a new topic as it'll just get locked!

I'm curious (purely for the sake of curiousity) to know why a graphics card which physically fits an AGP slot (an AGP card) would not run on an old PC? I've noticed that there are several things quoted with graphics card specs like:

1)Memory Interface

2)DDR rating such as DDR/DDR2/DDR3

Which I don't understand.

For my own education, exactly what has to be compatible with what for a graphics card to run on any given machine. I'd like to know this for the future when making more upgrades. I've become quite intriuged with the subject since my AGP motherboard rejected a modern AGP card. The plot thickens as it were.

Would someone enlighten me please, thanks

[echo1 0]

Could you provide more details on your motherboard? Also, did you try reseting the CMOS before inserting the new card?

[chris330 0]

Sincere apologies I do not have the motherboard manual anymore It came as fitted in a Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo 600 5 years ago. I am not even aware of what CMOS is so again I apologise for my ignorance, but I'm trying to learn about all this cool stuff.

Thanks for your reply, sorry I couldn't give a more concrete answer. Is it possible that there is some aspect of the motherboard which is simply not compatible with a modern graphics card?

*Edit*

Ah I think I do know what that means (the CMOS part). I just loaded up the part where you access that and the aperture is configurable from 4MB to 256MB. Currently it was set on 128MB. Could this be it? The motherboard was trying to talk to the graphics card with an aperture setting too low? Is that possible?

[wex-q 0]

I've had a Scaleo 600. It was bought by the family somewhere 5 years ago or so.

IIRC, it had a 1.2Ghz Celeron and 128mb SDRAM, so no DDR ram at all, it was SDRAM.

Maybe your model is newer though

[echo1 0]

Sincere apologies I do not have the motherboard manual anymore It came as fitted in a Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo 600 5 years ago. I am not even aware of what CMOS is so again I apologise for my ignorance, but I'm trying to learn about all this cool stuff.

Thanks for your reply, sorry I couldn't give a more concrete answer. Is it possible that there is some aspect of the motherboard which is simply not compatible with a modern graphics card?

*Edit*

Ah I think I do know what that means (the CMOS part). I just loaded up the part where you access that and the aperture is configurable from 4MB to 256MB. Currently it was set on 128MB. Could this be it? The motherboard was trying to talk to the graphics card with an aperture setting too low? Is that possible?

That could be a problem - mine is set to 128MB or 256MB. I was thinking of a less technical solution however - reseting to normal data. Usually the way to do this is by using a switching a jumper near the chip, but the lack of manual might make locating this a bit difficult, so the foolproof (yet inelegant) solution is to pull out the battery, leave for a minute, and reinsert.

NB Neither the jumper or Battery should be removed or changed unless the computer is plugged out, and built up charge removed by hitting the power button after removing the power cable from the back. Failure to do so may f--k your motherboard.

Another possibility is that the PSU in your computer may not be powerful enough, this actually seems like a more likely possibility. Older computers might have 250W or less, Whereas modern cards need 350W+

[chris330 0]

Thanks alot for the help

[Balschoiw 0]

I have a pretty basic question for hardware geeks

One of my old PC 2700 DDR RAM modules fried so

I want to replace the whole set of modules.

My motherboard supports DDR 400 PC 3200 Ram, so

I will buy two 1 GB modules. The highest capacity supported by the

motherboard is 3 GB.

Questions:

What are the best performance/price modules DDR 400 PC 3200 ?

Does dual-mode raise performance ?

How do they perform with overclocking ?

There are (for me) cryptic values with the RAM modules:

CL2 3-2-5

What does this mean ?

Does it make sense to buy 3 GB ? (Computer is mostly used for games, but I also run music - production programs and 3D programs like Quest3D, Maya on it.

Operating system is WinXP SP2 and I don´t plan to to switch to Vista soon.

Gfx card is a Leadtek 7600 GT AGP

The motherboard is an Asus A7V600-X with Athlon XP 3000+

Does anyone of you own an OCZ DDR-400 pc3200 1GB DIMM ?

How does it perform ?

[echo1 0]

I dont own any myself, but the OCZ RAM always seems to get good reviews, and seems to be good for overclocking. Best thing is to google the model name of the RAM youre looking at and read some reviews.

I would recommend 3GB - some motherboards dont take well to being filled to maximum capacity, a safer bet would be to stick to 2GB. You also get better performance when the RAM is in pairs.

[Balschoiw 0]

Thx so far. After checking some reviews, tests and prices, I guess I will go for a dual-kit of GEIL DDR-400 pc3200 value series DIMM´s. They seem to be very fast while a tad cheaper than comparable OCZ modules.

I can get them for 108 Euro plus 6 Euro for mail here.