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Victor_S.

PC Discussion Thread - All PC related in here.

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Creative's products suck a... a bottle of milk wink_o.gif

Actually not really their hardware, but their drivers are a complete disaster.

Yeah I'd agree with that, I had a Soundblaster Live back in the day and the driver support was nothing short of abysmal.

Aye, just try to find a driver on their website ... it's a nightmare! Although the new Autoupdate tool they ship with the X-Fi cards makes it easier, it detects your card and finds and downloads the updates for you.

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In the old days I'd spend an hour trying to navigate Creative's download/ftp system only to find the 3 year old SB Live drivers is still their most recent one wink_o.gif

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I too have had a pretty bad experience with X-Fis. I don't really know whether its the card itself, the drivers or my motherboard, but Windows is never able to detect the card. Swapping it from one PCI slot to another sometimes helps, but then sometimes it doesnt. At the moment I'm just using integrated audio which definitely works... I think I'll look into getting an Asus Xonar DX when I upgrade my computer next.

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I've been using an X-Fi card since 2006 and never experienced any problems.

ch, did you even disable the onboard audio and remove it's drivers?

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Originally I didn't install Onboard Audio drivers... That said, with the latest drivers I might try getting rid of the integrated audio drivers and reinstall... My Linux installation always seems to pick up the X-Fi, unfortunately, there are only beta drivers for 64 bit Linux out at the moment (or at least the last time I checked) so I cant use it there crazy_o.gif

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I've bought an used X-Fi Gamer soundcard at Ebay and it doesn't work properly, though the seller says it worked when he removed it from his computer.

You bought a used card from ebay... that's the problem. It's most likely the card has a fault, why else would it be removed from a working system and sold?

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Originally I didn't install Onboard Audio drivers... That said, with the latest drivers I might try getting rid of the integrated audio drivers and reinstall... My Linux installation always seems to pick up the X-Fi, unfortunately, there are only beta drivers for 64 bit Linux out at the moment (or at least the last time I checked) so I cant use it there  crazy_o.gif

But did you also disable the onboard audio from BIOS?

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I did indeed, and that didn't have much effect. That said, I had integrated drivers installed at the time, Im not sure if that would prevent the motherboard from picking up the card in Windows... I'll try it again whenever I install Windows the next time (that probably wont be for a good while though)

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OK heres a question for the hardware gurus in here:

Maybe some remeber my strange prob with getting no video signal and such if not you can read about it here

Page 138 Near bottom

Anyway, that crap started to happen again one week after i installed the new ATI card but it was more random, usually 1-2 attempts to start the pc until i got a picture, simple rule, if the ATI didnt made its swooosh startup sound then i already knew there would be no picture.

And once it would have started the picture would stay and there would be no probs like with the 7800GTX i had before where the screen turned all fuzzy after a while.

Well it worsened over last days with the PC hard locking when in games ( never had that since two years ).

And yesterday it completely went downhill, can start as often as i want, the HDD lamp goes on but i miss the sound of the starting ATI Card fan, no monitor signal at all.

Pisses me off quite a bit because i just spend good money on the card to fix that crap.

Well i think its obvious that the board seems to be wrecked.

So the PC goes into its 3rd year now, been thinking of replacing this annoying thing but i think it would be wasted because most componenets are still good.

So what would you guys recomment boardwise?

I want to keep the Ram, Gfx card and CPU for now.

I dotn plan to overclock it or modify it in any way ( exept the CPU cooler ).

Or Should i better spend some more and go for a set with a board some Phenom and DDR-2 Ram 800 or more?

Do newer Mainboards still support DDR-1 Ram like mine?

Currently i have:

- Windows XP Pro

- MSI K8N Neo4 Board

- ATI HD4870 Gfx card

- AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core 4200+

- 2GB DDR-1 Kingston Ram PC-400 ( not totally sure at the 400 )

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So what would you guys recomment boardwise?

I want to keep the Ram, Gfx card and CPU for now.

Or Should i better spend some more and go for a set with a board some Phenom and DDR-2 Ram 800 or more?

Do newer Mainboards still support DDR-1 Ram like mine?

Currently i have:

- Windows XP Pro

- MSI K8N Neo4 Board

- ATI HD4870 Gfx card

- AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core 4200+

- 2GB DDR-1 Kingston Ram PC-400 ( not totally sure at the 400 )

Well, it is not guaranteed that if you change anything the problem will go away, as I don't really know which is the problem.

Nowadays a new board with DDR2-800 is rather cheap though and the Phenom looks good. smile_o.gif So you really should consider the update a possibility.

But if I were you I would try to find what the problem really is before doing anything, as you can even update again your setup and still have the same problem, and that will suck.

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Just to answer your question DDR2 RAM is not backwards compatible with DDR1 (DDR1 RAM won't fit into DDR2 slot).

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ShadowNX:

What sort of PSU do you have in there? As this would be something you'd probably have to replace anyway if you were doing a major upgrade, I'd recommend starting on that because it could fix your problems.

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Good question but cant answer that atm as i never bothered about it, ill check in the documents when im home.

What annoys me is if i give the PC to a expert then the possibility of him telling me to get a new board and pay as much as the board already costs for that info is pretty high.

So IF i would upgrade what would be a good price/value board that supports the Athlon64s and also newer things like Phenoms.

If possible around 100Eur ( +/- a little )

I googled a bit but honestly i always get lost in all the specs...

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Why a Phenom though? And the spec you have already is quite decent, I'd seriously consider just getting a new PSU and upgrading the rest later. The worst thing that happens is that you have to upgrade slightly sooner than you anticipated, and you have a PSU that you would have needed to get anyway. I would recommend a Corsair HX620 btw.

BTW: There are no boards that support the older Socket 939 CPUs AND the newer socket AM2 or AM2+. If you replace the board, you will need a new CPU (and RAM)

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Why not a Phenom?

Its just to have options to upgrade later.

But honestly CPUs are even more confusing because of the unique way that everyone uses to name their CPUs.

Good times where you just had to know you had a 1000Mhz and the next biggest step was a 1800Mhz ( just as examples ) that you could buy from Intel or AMD ^^

Wha ti consider currently is to invest in something that gives me all options and i guess the Phenoms will sooner or later replace all the Athlons so whoo knows if i get fitting cpus if i want to upgrade in lets say a year or two.

Did someone notice that im a total hardware noob so far? yes? Good ^^

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Phenoms are indeed the best options for those that prefer AMD.

The Phenom 9750 Quadcore is a nice option, don't know any values out there, here they are a bit cheaper than Intel Quadcore.

ch_123 is right wink_o.gif you would need a new board and DDR2 RAM.

About the PSU the one everyone keeps recommending me is the Corsair TX650W.

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Just picked up a QX9770. Running an OCZ Vendetta 2 and an Asus Rampage Extreme. Huge difference from my older machine. Oh and running 2 4870 X2 in CrossfireX.

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Why not a Phenom?

Its just to have options to upgrade later.

(EDIT: Nevermind, forgot that Socket AM2 CPUs will fit in Socket AM3 motherboards) Intel are releasing their Core i7s within a few months, and due to the fact that they have on-board memory controllers like AMDs chips, we will probably see an end to the days where everytime Intel released a new revision to a CPU, you needed a new motherboard. In fact, I would say that now is a very bad time to upgrade CPUs, even if you don't want one of the next generation parts, the current ones will become extremely cheap. I'd try a new PSU and hold out a few months to upgrade the rest of the machine.

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Truth is that Socket 775 will be around for a long while even after mainstream Nehalem and It will be more months than that before all the nehalem components (motherboards , etc...) start popping up and selling.

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@Universal- wow nice system bro!

   How's that 4870 crossfire running Arma and what's your overclock on that board?

I'll definitely wait on buying the Nehalem but I'm glad it's coming out to help drive down prices on the current chips. That new e8600 looks sweet in the OC department but I'll wait till the price drops a little.

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Truth is that Socket 775 will be around for a long while even after mainstream Nehalem and It will be more months than that before all the nehalem components (motherboards , etc...) start popping up and selling.

Of course it will be, but that doesn't take away from the validity of what I said. The Core i7 chips will be a great leap forward (supposedly anyway) and the older Core 2 parts will be dirt cheap. Everyone wins...

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Apparently not that much of a big leap.

http://anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=480

@froggyluv: thanks , its more than enough power for me. Wont need a new system for a very long while. Let me just say night and day difference. Gonna overclock it as soon as I can (or maybe not). No I have not played any games yet on this new machine except benchmarks (pcmark vantage).

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That remains to be seen. But with promises of higher clockspeeds, more cores, and better forwards compatibility, I'm going to give Intel the benefit of the doubt until I see some real benchmarks, not speculation on cache speed (which is something that has never really had a big impact on games performance anyway). The worst that can happen is that it's little improvement over what we have now, it makes S775 hardware cheaper.

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Just wondering about 64bit XP, is it worth getting. At the moment I'm on 32 bit and everything is fine but if I upgraded would I get a noticeable performance increase and would all my games still work or are there some compatibility issues with it?

Also would it be worth trying this dual core patch from Microsoft? Has anyone given it a go yet and is there a performance increase and also are there any compatibility issues with it?

And one quick final question, In the upcoming days I am getting a new hard drive with a 16mb cache, would it be worth installing my OS onto that drive or should I just save the hassle and leave it on my 8mb cache drive?

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456820:

Nope, there is absolutely no point in getting Xp 64, very few games can actually reap the benefits of a 64bit OS (software has to be compiled to support the specific features of a 64 bit architechture) at best, your games will ran exactly the same as under 32 bit XP. What you are more likely to see however are games not working properly with XP64, you will also end up with driver problems for certain hardware (particularily older peripherals, eg. printers). At the moment, you'd only need a 64 bit OS if you were using special software that actually made use of it (database, scientific and mathematical applications, etc.) or if you had more then 3GB of RAM. If that was the case, it would actually make more sense to go for Vista 64, which has wider support than XP 64 (XP64 isnt actually XP, its based off Server 2003, you'll have compatibility problems either way, so its best to pick the one that will be more supported in the long run.)

As for hard drives... The exact amount of cache is largely irrelevant, what matters is overall performance. Even then, I doubt the boost you'd get would be worth your time backing up and reinstalling. What model are you thinking of getting anyway out of curiosity?

EDIT: Correction of typos.

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