DO NOT ever buy Gigabyte motherboards, after spending 160.00 mine was broken missing parts and there customer service is a joke.
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DO NOT ever buy Gigabyte motherboards, after spending 160.00 mine was broken missing parts and there customer service is a joke.
playing consoles on the monitor...
Speaking of Hard dirves you have also fogot that Seagate are the only people who make Serial ATA drives. And they also make the fastest harddrive in existence
The Cheetah X 15 (15,000 RPM)! 4.2 ms seek time
seagate arent the only company making serial ata drives, maxtor and western digital also do them
i would not recommend using a tv card to connect a game console because the signal from the console would still be very low resolution, just like the signal it sends to a regular tv.Quote:
Originally posted by Soul814@22 July 2003 - 04:00
playing consoles on the monitor...
if there is any way to directly connect the console to the monitor (i.e. like the VGA adapter for Dreamcast), that is the best way to go. the console needs to detect what kind of screen it is connected to, so it can send a high resolution signal.
talking about hard drives, i heard SCSI drives with 15000RPM is alos good, but unreasonably pricey. Western Digital Caviar (they are generally good) 80, 100, 120GB drives have a JB series, they were good 1/2 year ago, but the world don't stand still.
talking about video cards, does anyoene know how to turn a VHS video into a .avi file? [or maybe i should start a new thread about this?]
Does anybody know a good site in the US where I can find good prices on gaming computers?
i don't personally but theres a list of recommended retailers in the 'computer resources' pinned topic. maybe check a couple of those ?
O.K. Thanks!
www.colorcases.com KIK @$$ CASES
nvidia is yesterdays news, I have had nothing but trouble with 3 of their cards and drivers and site....pure crap in my book..won't even listen to change my mind so forget it. But I got 3 Nvidia cards that collect dust. Probalbly to old now anyway to be any use to anyone.They were just basic 32's and 64's. ATI all the way. As for others if it don't say LG,Maxtor,Ati or logitech,sony.samsung..forget it...my opinion of course...
Where are the hubs and switch boxes from this topic? :(
I've used MSI mobo's for some time now, haven't had any probs with them.
And the D-Led was great help when I'd built my first one, it was really nice to just be able to look as the diodes and see what was wrong when it wouldn't start, since I'd usually assume that it was my cpu going, when it was software related and that kind of stuff.
ALTEC LANSING A L L T H E W A Y !Quote:
Originally posted by Lamsey@29 March 2003 - 23:17
I think Acer are now called Benq.Quote:
cdrw.... acer....
I didn't forget speakers, I just don't know enough about them...
and how did I forget Corsair RAM? editing first post now...
The biggest Thing to watchout for today is the power supplies that they put into cases!. whatc the 3.3 volt lines they usually do not put much amps on the line!!. causing problems with the pci bus and the microprocessor!. remember your AGP port also uses the 3.3v lines and geforce video cards are AMP hungry as well as the processor!. :rolleyes:
A word of advice about Intel processors:
They cheat. Unless your going with their new "M"s, first take the advertised speed of the processor, devide it by 3, and then subtract that from the advertised speed. That's the real quality of the clock speed.
Intel only does 2/3rds of a normal cycle to get that speed. It loops the extra 1/3rd onto the next cycle, and so on. It will be doing things faster, but it will have much more to do.
AMD doesn't.
Edit: ATI also did this for a long while as well, but I believe they have stopped.
You can say whatever you like; I think your opinion is interesting, but the truth is that Intel microprocessors are the fastest, although not the cheapest.Quote:
Originally posted by TalonKarrde@21 September 2003 - 06:23
A word of advice about Intel processors:
They cheat. Unless your going with their new "M"s, first take the advertised speed of the processor, devide it by 3, and then subtract that from the advertised speed. That's the real quality of the clock speed.
Intel only does 2/3rds of a normal cycle to get that speed. It loops the extra 1/3rd onto the next cycle, and so on. It will be doing things faster, but it will have much more to do.
AMD doesn't.
Edit: ATI also did this for a long while as well, but I believe they have stopped.
Welcome to hardwareworld. B)
You can say whatever you like; I think your opinion is interesting, but the truth is that Intel microprocessors are the fastest, although not the cheapest.Quote:
Originally posted by adamp2p+21 September 2003 - 00:54--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (adamp2p @ 21 September 2003 - 00:54)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-TalonKarrde@21 September 2003 - 06:23
A word of advice about Intel processors:
They cheat. Unless your going with their new "M"s, first take the advertised speed of the processor, devide it by 3, and then subtract that from the advertised speed. That's the real quality of the clock speed.
Intel only does 2/3rds of a normal cycle to get that speed. It loops the extra 1/3rd onto the next cycle, and so on. It will be doing things faster, but it will have much more to do.
AMD doesn't.
Edit: ATI also did this for a long while as well, but I believe they have stopped.
Welcome to hardwareworld. B) [/b][/quote]
I've never heard of this 'partial cycling'. The main reason an intel processor at a higher clock speed runs no better than an amd at a bit lower clock speed is their stepping. The best way to explain it is to say that a processor has so many steps in a cycle. I can't remember the exact number, but I beleive P4's have 24 steps and new amd's have 12/14. Well, every time your processor executes something, it guesses as to what the next 'step' is going to be. Every time it guesses wrong (which is many times per second) it has to backtrack from whatever 'step' it was on to 'step' 1. So a P4 has further to backtrack each time, and it inevitably slows it down. Because of this efficiency AMD's don't have to have to same clock speed as intel processors to perform at the same level. PC World had a great article on this a while back. I'll see if I can find it.
interesting, that about the processer. thx TalonKarrde,adamp2p,gumbydancin. :o
now if you had to suggest a good mainboard for a computer and is cheap which type would you chose? not like the manufactures name but a type.
Quote:
Originally posted by Lamsey+29 March 2003 - 21:18--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Lamsey @ 29 March 2003 - 21:18)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>OK, many people are asking about what's good and what's not.
The only way to find out for sure is to research yourself at impartial sites like Tom's Hardware Guide or Anandtech. But, to give you a head start, here is a list of manufacturers who have a good reputation for certain types of product:
[/b]
Reputation unfortunately does not guarantee performance.
Although I would agree that Asus are quality (used the A7N8X-X a coupla times) I wouldn't suggest that they were out in front of a good number of competitors. Also, you're only as good as your latest board and Gigabyte come directly to mind as one company dropping down the respect ladder a few years ago.Quote:
Originally posted by Lamsey@29 March 2003 - 21:18
Motherboards
Asus are probably the best high-end motherboard manufacturer. For mid-range or budget systems, I've had good experiences with Elitegroup.
Yep, ATI have a blistering series in the Radeon but how long will they produce stable drivers?Quote:
Originally posted by Lamsey@29 March 2003 - 21:18
Video Cards
nVidia Geforce cards are affordable and powerful, but ATi are currently the performance kings.
I went right off their stuff after an AIWPro I bought wouldn't run reliably on anything I plugged it into. I still have it and it still doesn't have decent drivers so I could put it in my kids' second puter with Win98.
Two more words: WDM drivers.Quote:
Originally posted by Lamsey@29 March 2003 - 21:18
Sound Cards
Two words: Creative Labs
I will never recommend anything from CL after they flatly refused to develop WDM drivers for about half a dozen SB128 cards from the range that they produced. I have three of these cards; they all have different chipsets and none of them will drive rear speakers on systems with WinME or later OS. CL stated that they never developed any sort of WDM drivers for these (and other) SB128 derivatives and completely shut up when asked who wrote the functionally incomplete WDM drivers on the WinME CD. Even better, CL deleted negative posts from groups on their own news server before eventually pulling the plug on said server completely.
CL are lower than whale droppings.
IMHO :)
I buy Trust mice. Apart from one problem that could've been dodgy Epson USB scanner software (now updated and fixed) I've found Trust mice to be reliable with a high build quality.Quote:
Originally posted by Lamsey@29 March 2003 - 21:18
Mice
Logitech make good, reliable mice of all kinds.
Genius make very good budget mice - they make decent optical wheel mice for less than £10.
I'd also suggest an optical wheel mouse but if you're at your puter a lot, I'd say steer clear of cordless ones 'cause the battery will need charging a lot!
<!--QuoteBegin-Lamsey@29 March 2003 - 21:18
Printers
HP make the highest-quality printers but they can be expensive to buy and run.
Epson make less robust printers, but they are more inexpensive.
[/quote]
HP make printers that cost more than others and usually don't give as good results.
The only advantage I can see that HP might have over Epson is that the print head is part of the cartridge and gets changed when you renew. This means you can refill the cart with cheaper ink (HP carts cost a bit, don't they!) a few times before quality declines. With any printer (I like Epson) I'd suggest not getting a 'budget' one but look at the (UK)£100-ish range as bottom line.
just what i was thinkingQuote:
Originally posted by Smurfette@17 October 2003 - 19:31
Reputation unfortunately does not guarantee performance.
I have a intel serverboard which was a bit pricey,Quote:
Originally posted by Mavol@17 October 2003 - 04:59
now if you had to suggest a good mainboard for a computer and is cheap which type would you chose? not like the manufactures name but a type.
I also have this too which has never given me any probs and their update site is pretty good too http://www.msi.com.tw/
thx InverseKinetix, ive heard about msi. good to know that their boards are good.
You can get very decent nVidia nForce2 boards for a decent price now - I've got Soltek's SL-75FRN2-L (it's a cracker) and Komplett have the Asus A7N8X-X at a good price too.Quote:
Originally posted by Mavol@30 October 2003 - 11:16
thx InverseKinetix, ive heard about msi. good to know that there boards are good.
k, good to know that there are ones with decent prives out there. ill keep those 2 boards in mind when i go looking for one.
I just bought an Abit NF7S board for £85.00, and an Athlon 2800MHz BARTON cpu for £107.00. I was so pleased with the first Abit board I bought I had to get another :) So far so good, excellent board (with SATA) and fast chip for the money. Only (slight) problem I had was with the NFORCE chipset IDE drivers, they fool windows into thinking you have SCSI devices attached for better performance. Nero wont burn anything using these drivers, you have to roll back to the default windows IDE drivers. Can't say I noticed any difference in system performance after rolling back the drivers.
Quote:
I just bought an Abit NF7S board for £85.00, and an Athlon 2800MHz BARTON cpu for £107.00. I was so pleased with the first Abit board I bought I had to get another So far so good, excellent board (with SATA) and fast chip for the money. Only (slight) problem I had was with the NFORCE chipset IDE drivers, they fool windows into thinking you have SCSI devices attached for better performance. Nero wont burn anything using these drivers, you have to roll back to the default windows IDE drivers. Can't say I noticed any difference in system performance.
Good for you! :lol:
One word for any LCD purchases: Samsung
Okay, and maybe the viewsonic, the company with the 3 birds on the branch, as both seem to dominate the offices around here.
K, heres my take on this -
CPU - AMD win on VFM hands down. Get a 2500+ Barton and you should be able to clock it to 3200+ speeds without too much problem, but adequate cooling both on the CPU and in the way of case fans is a must.
Intel - bit pricier but a lot of their 2.4GHZ processors will clock to 3GHz easily. Just dont be fooled into thinking that clockspeed is everything as a AMD at 2500mhz will completely wipe the floor with a 3GHz p4.
Motherboards - Especially if you are looking to overclock, Abit and Asus lead the way. For AMD the only board of choice is teh NF7 or NF7-s, they are both very good vfm and will overclock well. For Intel either the Abit IC7 or Asus P4c800
RAM - Geil, Corsair, Twinmos are all good brands for overclocking, Crucial are good for stock speed ram.
Video Cards - Geforce FX was a big flop, ATI is the way to go. Rad9800 is the best top end card, in pro or newly launched XT format, the 9600 series represents great vfm and dominates the middle range. Check out the 9800SE allinwonder for about £160, some can be softmodded into 9800pros and they also have the tv tuner.
Cases- Coolermaster are phasing out their range so be quick, other than that try Lian li or antec they have a good range.
PSU- Antec or Enermax are the best choices.
i had a huge pain-in-the-ass problem with the ATI cards (all of them)Quote:
Originally posted by Mad old tory@11 November 2003 - 16:37
Video Cards - Geforce FX was a big flop, ATI is the way to go. Rad9800 is the best top end card, in pro or newly launched XT format, the 9600 series represents great vfm and dominates the middle range. Check out the 9800SE allinwonder for about £160, some can be softmodded into 9800pros and they also have the tv tuner.
and it was a very simple issue: the Catalyst drivers (specifically the SmartGart)
the smartgart apparently begins sending a signal after its first run to the mobo, telling the mobo to drop the AGP speed (if necessary, which is what my SmartGart thought). My mobo refused to accept the SmartGart signal, and thus, would not boot at all after successfully booting once.
if i removed the card and removed the drivers for it, and reinstalled the card, the whole issue would start from scratch (boot once, not boot at all afterwards)
My NVidia card/drivers never had this issue.
i also overclocked my 5600u to get slightly better performance than the 9600xt, so...
My conclusion: ATI's "supersafe" drivers work on 99.9% of all PCs, but fail on the other 0.1%
I LOOOOOOVE ATI, as they made the gpu for the gamecube, and it is absolutely flawless!
but of course, i cant use something which doesnt work, and i feel that the
fx 5(6/7)00u does a better job, and their newly released drivers are superb.
final take:
-------------------nVidia / ATI
--------------------------------
top-end-------------5950u / 9800xt
almost-top------5(8/9)00u / 9800p
top/mid----------5(8/9)00 / 9800
hiMid/topMid:----5700u-oc / 9700(p)
vHi/mid-------------5700u / 9500p
hi/mid-------------5700oc / 9600xt
mid ------------5(6u/7)00 / 9600p
low/mid--------------5600 / 9600
low-----------------5200u / 9200p
dont consider--------5200 / 9(2/0p)00
if u see a (x/y) it means that the 5x00 and the 5y00 are both good
if u see a (Xu/y) it means that the 5X00u and the 5y00 are both good
if u see a 5(x/y)00u, it means that the 5x00u and the 5y00u are both good
if u see a 5950(u) it means that the 5950u and the 5950 are both good
u means ultra
p means pro
XT means XT
oc means overclocked
sidenote: why did i even consider the 5800? cuz it, to be truthful, does a hell-of-a-better job than the 5900. in fact, if the 5800 was done on a smaller chip process, then the fan could have been smaller, and it would have completely laid the other FXs and Radeons to shame.
example: the 5800u can pull better graphics than All of the other cards, including the 5950s and the 9800XTs, in games such as Doom3, HL2(beta), and ut2004, along with every other graphix-intensive game out there!!!!!
so, why isnt it ranked with the 5950? one word: noise
there you go: a complete take on which cards are better, driverwise, and a comparison chart. (for anyone looking for a 5800, they were discontinued by nVidia, but some companies are still making them. look hard, my friend)
Has anyone had any meetings with any Excelsor hardrives? :unsure:
I have just bought this one.
The reviews on the 60Gb & 40Gb ones were good :)
If you wanna do anything more hardworking than just listen to mp3s and have surround sound..avoid Creative cards.
A step up would be something by Terratec or preferably M-Audio.
I have Creative Audigy 2 soundcard and Creative Inspire 6.1 Speakers. I've never experienced any problems with creative produkts and audio quality is superb!Quote:
Originally posted by The Legend@10 January 2004 - 02:00
If you wanna do anything more hardworking than just listen to mp3s and have surround sound..avoid Creative cards.
A step up would be something by Terratec or preferably M-Audio.
Creative owns audio!
Edit: spelling.
I like PNY great after sales service
:o aftersale :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally posted by Voetsek@11 June 2004 - 09:12
I like PNY great after sales service
all you need is your 14 day guarantee and this place :01:
I have Creative Audigy 2 soundcard and Creative Inspire 6.1 Speakers. I've never experienced any problems with creative produkts and audio quality is superb!Quote:
Originally posted by Explosive+10 January 2004 - 11:20--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Explosive @ 10 January 2004 - 11:20)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-The Legend@10 January 2004 - 02:00
If you wanna do anything more hardworking than just listen to mp3s and have surround sound..avoid Creative cards.
A step up would be something by Terratec or preferably M-Audio.
Creative owns audio!
Edit: spelling. [/b][/quote]
CL has extremely poor Drivers.
The hardware is good but with their own Drivers,
if you want to do more that listen some mp3's or play a game or two,
they are utter-shite.
If you have SBlaster and want better drivers, you might want to check out
the kX Project.
:cool2:
You mean you haven't had problems yet, anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by Explosive
Just wait until there's a new driver model for Windows and CL say they're not gonna make drivers for old products - about 12 months has been 'old' to them in the past. God forbid you should complain about not being able to use a feature on the card after upgrading, as they've been known to suppress vocal discord in the past, too.
Wow this thread hasnt been updated in a while but as of now
RAM - OCZ is really good
HARDDRIVE - Segate/Western Digital
=D
shouldnt this guide be like updated?
yeah i would say so