My computers real old but it suites me well enough. But as flash players and such continue to require greater resources graphics related things such as HD videos wont play very well. For this reason I need a graphics card. So what should I get? My computer don't got no fancy graphics ports so I need PCI.
Not even AGP? Your PC must be older than mine (fourth quarter 2000, PIII 866 MHz). At that age, I don't see how it would have the CPU to handle HD video. The only sort of "PCI" video card you're going to find with pixel-shader-accelerated HD video decoding is PCI Express.
Flash is entirely CPU bound, and a really horrible way to play videos. What flash does at 5 FPS on a pentium 233 can also be done in realtime with a proper video codec and hardware overlay.
And indeed, newegg still sells PCI video cards.
Yeah I know that about flash but its what the internet likes to use these days. I also have issues with very high grade AVI's usually xvid, so getting a graphics card wont help?
tepples wrote:
Not even AGP? Your PC must be older than mine (fourth quarter 2000, PIII 866 MHz). At that age, I don't see how it would have the CPU to handle HD video. The only sort of "PCI" video card you're going to find with pixel-shader-accelerated HD video decoding is PCI Express.
it dose not have a AGP slot, but its not THAT old. its a 1.5ghz celeron
I would hate to blow the money but maybe Ill have to get a new computer and use this one as a file server
I also have a little atom netbook I got earleyer this year and it dose better.
SO what you do guys think bout the i7 processors, are they worth the money?
I don't know but if you invest in one, changes that your computer will remain top-notch for a decent amount of years are high. If you go for a cheap Dual Core it will becomes quickly obsolete as Quad Cores are getting a increasing part of the market. Altoug, it's possible that some Dual Cores are still better than some Quad Cores, you also have to take the frequency and other things in account to really see a CPU's power (and it is really a complicated science). An additional core don't double the equivalent frequency contrary to popular belief.
As long as you're not a PC gamer or only play relatively old games you should rather look into a good CPU rather than a good graphic card. As long as you avoid the really low-cost crap (like Celeron stuff) you should be fine.
And if you want to save money wait a year after Intel released something so that AMD release their impoved/cheaper counterpart. Don't always work tough, but often it was like that.
If you only do internet and watch video, my answer would be no. Unless the applications you are using take advantage of the 4 cores, this is a waste of money and electricity. i7 quad core is 130w on the go so you will need a good power supply depending on what's inside the machine.
The dual core E8400 3.0ghz is still the best bang for the buck at the moment. I'm more than happy with it.
Yeah so in summary avoid anything that is too high cost or too low cost.
If you want to save money go for a AMD CPU (anything in the "Athlon X2" series should be decent) and a computer to mount yourself as opposed to an already packaged/installed one, I always did that and it was fine. (this don't apply to notebooks tough obviously).
I'm getting a new notebook soon and I still don't know if I'll get rid of my old desktop PC (which is "only" 3.5 years old), I'd give it to you if it weren't really heavy to ship.
OK thanks for the info I'll probably go with a dual core.
I think I decided on this CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819103680
But I need help picking out a motherboard to go along with it.
help with that and outer advice would be appreciated.
My question is an issue of compatibility the "Phenom II X2" part is confusing me there are ones that say Phenom II and Phenom II X4 and I'm wondering if all of them works with this processor.
I would say as long as it's an AM3 motherboard it should work. AM3 is also backwards compatible with AM2+ so even that should work.
so as long as the socket type is correct it will be fine?
Well ok but that has not always been the case in the past, are you sure?
I would assume if it can handle a quad core Phenom II then it can also handle a dual core one.
Do this. See here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131398
where it says "customers also bought" , click view all to see if people also bought the X2. On this motherboard they have. So this one should work.
Well I figured out how to identify compatible motherboards, thanks for your help.
sorry for DP but if the good folk at NESdev do no mind I would like someone to look over my component choices and tell me if I made any mistakes.
case
motherboard
CPU
memory
thermal compound (not that the last one really matters)
HDD's and optical drives I already have spares, I also question the quality of the PSU that comes with the case but am not overly concerned with that as I will probably replace it anyway. Have I made any errors?
Opinions are welcome.
edit: interesting, the motherboard is the same one hamster picked did not realize that when I ordered it.
I'm noting that the Case's PSU is 330W common with only 1 identified rail. When working with "Modernized" CPU's I found it's best practice to get multiple +12v rails...That way your power can be more "evenly" distributed, and not have one device stressing the others because they share voltages.
If you are going with exactly that, somthing in the $40 range from Antec, BFG, or Cooler Master has seem to provide me with positive results consistently.
Here's some examples:
Antec EarthWatts EA-380
Cooler Master Elite 460
Couldn't Find a cheap BFG Tech PSU on Newegg, Sorry.
This is true, Also look at the AMPS on the +12v rails. The higher the better.
My PCI Videocard was a Voodoo 3, it was really good and lasted a long time despite the drivers being abandoned after Nvidia took over 3dfx.
For my latest PC's case I mostly wanted one that was really quiet. I kinda wanted a clear one, but I figure I hear it more often than I look at it. I went with the Antec P182 (appears "deactivated" on newegg) and it is nearly silent.
For the thermal compound, if there's any already attached the CPU, I wouldn't bother. It could also possibly void the warranty.
I had a Voodoo 3 3500. It had a video capture device and tv tuner built in. I loved it. I had it in my old Athlon classic. Unfortunately the big honking slot based Athlon CPU slid out of it's slot one day while I was moving it in my trunk and it landed on the video card knocking off several small components.
I probably wouldn't bother with the OCZ memory. I also wouldn't bother with Corsair (you can
read about my experiences).
I tend to stick to Crucial memory because it has a lifetime warranty, and it's absolutely guaranteed to work with the board you pick.
http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts. ... TD-V%20EVO
I can't comment on the CPU or motherboard because I don't buy AMD stuff.
Get whatever case suits your needs. I tend to lean towards Supermicro cases, but they're expensive. For generic workstations, I lean towards Antec.
PSU-wise, I tend to stick to Antec stuff, but there's compatibility problems in some situations. I speak from experience...
Otherwise -- and I say this seriously -- consider just buying a pre-made workstation from Dell. They're of surprisingly good quality (referring to their XPS systems, and not the decked-out gaming rigs which cost amounts only parents with snot-nosed unemployed kids could afford...), excellent cable runs, etc...
I'm getting to the age where I'm considering just buying pre-made workstations, even though I usually end up buying individual parts. I buy (mostly) pre-made servers, sans RAM + CPU + disks...
Thanks for the advice everyone.
Well I got it up and running, the motherboards pretty nice easy to setup with lots of nice features and it seems to work much better than my old computer (naturally) even my keyboard is working better (probubly because the computer is closer to me). Mouse still sucks though.
I should be able to do all the modern stuff with this.
edit:maybe not a great idea for a case, the side fan is unnessasery and a little noisy so I just dont plug it in. Also installing this horrible update to IE still makes the screen fuzzy and its layout is awfull. I have no idea why microsoft is so dead set on destroying the usefullness of there browser
Well congrats for your PC, and yeah IE sucks use opera which rocks.
I guess the extra fans you were talking about is for overclocking gurus, which you probably don't need unless your PC's temperature goes above 50° or so.
peppers wrote:
Also installing this horrible update to IE still makes the screen fuzzy
LCD or CRT?
LCD, we have actually been over
this before.
peppers wrote:
LCD, we have actually been over
this before.
Possibly by the "update" you're referring to IE8, by which ClearType text is enabled by default in the browser for all HTML? (I use LCDs exclusively and I turn it off, because I think ClearType looks like complete garbage. Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced tab -> Multimedia section of Settings -> Uncheck "Always use ClearType for HTML").
ClearType... It's so sarcastic that it was called it that way
In Windows 7, even if you disable it, there is still some place that stay unless you do some registry hack. I hate it too. It's harder to read text that way.
So that's what it is, another retarded Microsoft thing that dose not work. Thanks for the info. Everyone has been so helpful I am now having a new problem.
I have 3 computers connected to a home network, they all connect through a router, one of them is wireless the other 2 are wired. All 3 where working fine for a wile but now I am having trouble with one of the wired ones.
The computer can access files off the other 2 computers just fine but try to access files off the computer from one of the outer computers and it wont work. When you try to run a home network wizard it gives you an error when it tries to configure the network. So any ideas how to fix this, I assume something must be corrupted someplace. I was having some PSU issues, it may or may not have stared after it lost power a bunch of times (this is my old computer)
Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Try this. Find the computer's IP address. Go to one of the other computers and instead of \\computername use \\ipaddress and see if it works.
did not work
edit: want ahead and did a repair install, its working now