Posts by Catweazle

A 3DMark2001 score of about 6000 is actually quite low by today's standards. For a 'good' responsive gaming system you need a card that will score in excess of 12,000, and preferably one which will score 15,000 or better. Even a previous generation Nvidia GeForce4 Ti4200 card will score at about 12,000.

The 'cut-down' versions of Radeon cards perform at a lower level than that, as they have reduced memory addressing bandwidth and cant perform calculations with enough efficiency as a result. The 'cut down' versions of Nvida FX cards, on the other hand, are usually simply clocked lower, and are closer to their 'big brothers'.

Bur 3DMark2001 id a DirectX8 tool, and most new games are DirectX9. NVidia FX cards are NOT as good as the Radeon 9xxx equivalents for DirectX9 features, because of the way it is implemented.

Also, the 'letter designations for Radeon and NVidia cards are used differently. For Radeons, an 'XT' is an overclocked card. For the NVidia FX an 'XT' is an UNDERclocked card! The FX5900XT is the best of the best with 'budget' lines, because of the components used. It's basically a card that was designed specifically to move excess stocks of 'good' components in preparation for the introduction of the new NVidia 6800 generation of display cards.

Hi Diana,

Sorry to disappoint you but no, there's not really such a thing as an 'Adequate' product available. Not if you want your sons 'protected' anyway. Any products available only give an illusion of protection, and the best of them are so restrictive that the internet becomes a virtually useless tool to use as a result of their restrictions.

The best approach, by far, is twofold:

* Educate your sons about the dangers to the computer itself when websurfing the 'seedier' sections of the internet. Such habits bring unwelcome 'spyware' intruders which can make the system unusable. Read through some of the discussions in our Security forum section to see the mess some people have to untangle, and the difficulty of sorting it out! Those problems usually result from clicking on advertisements, downloading 'free' stuff, chasing 'cracks' to get copied software working etc. etc. etc. All those activities which quickly link to or through porn, in other words. It's best to avoid them as far as possible and learn protection techniques when you need to go quickly past them.

Don't be fooled by seeing 'porn' links in the browser history. 95% of all web-browsing will generate those, simply from onscreen advertisements. They don't necessarily mean that someone has been viewing pornography.

* Talk openly and frankly about matters of human relationships in the home with your teenaged sons, so their curiousity isn't heightened by the subject being 'forbidden territory'. Yes, even those more 'shocking' …

Nope. Definitely not. Scans done weekly, no other problems. Unless Googles toolbar is classified as spyware.

What are you scanning with? There is no single spyware detection tool that catches everything. At least two and preferably three different tools are recommended for adequate protection. Spyware is becoming increasingly sophisticated.

Right-click on the Start button.

Choose 'Properties', and on the 'Start Menu' tab click on the Customize button.
On the Advanced tab, deselect the entry for "List my most recently opened documents" and click OK and Apply as necessary.

That'll do it ;)

One of the best places to source a cheaper display card upgrade from would be the 'Swap Meet' sections of online Overclocker and Gamer sites. Prices there will DEFINATELY be lower than you'd find on eBay, and there are plenty of people offloading decent cards because they are about to or have recently upgraded to next generation cards. Display cards owned by people in such online communities are generally 'turned over' at a substantially quicker rate than the general purchasing public.

The FX5900SE is a fairly decent card, but definitely not a 'better' performance card than a Radeon 9800 Pro. In performance it would sit between the 9600XT and the 9800 Pro. The FX5900XT is a better card because, although 'Reference specs' has the core clock at 10MHz lower (most clock it at 400MHz anyway, same as SE) the actual graphics processor is the same unit used in the 5950Ultra, and some models have high quality Hynix RAM onboard. Leadtek FX5900XT is the pick of the bunch, and sourcing a secondhand one of those is a damn fine cheap upgrade.

thats too expencive though! What about the fx5900?

Here's my comments about 'good value' display card purchases meow.

http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/post58368.html#post58368

But if that card you have is one you're currently happy with, then why bother? Keep using it until it doesn't do the job for you anymore, and by then there'll most likely be something better, for cheaper. There always is! ;)

Check, double check and recheck the leads plugged in to the motherboard front panel connector. Sometimes even having the power LED lead reversed can stop you from booting.

The only way you're gonna tell if the processor is kaput is to try it in another motherboard, or try another processor in YOUR motherboard!

I edited the post above, because I forgot to include the link earlier. sorry about that.

And Dude, you are definitely not getting the best in display quality from Doom 3 on an FX5200! The best display cards available on the market can't extract the best that game has to offer! What you think is good quality will only be a quite reduced set of available features. Doom 3 is very scalable, and can run quite playably even on a Gf4 MX card.

The display card market is a tricky place for the unprepared and unwary. Research prices carefully, and then research the detailed specifications of the card you're looking at carefully, preferably on a Hardware review site and definitely NOT on the manufacturer's website!

The reported information would have been incorrect because not enough information was being used to identify the thing.

I've given my recommendations about good value display card purchases here, in Australian dollars:

http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/showthread.php?p=58368#post58368

Thanks for that Coco.

512MB of RAM is half a gigabyte. A Gigabyte is 1024 megabytes ;)

This topic has my recommendations for good price/performance points and what display cards to get at those points.

you'll have to do a little research yourself (or hope someone else jumps in and provides further information) because I'm only familiar with prices in Australian dollars

That picture is inconclusive. Like I said, it's actually rather common for components to be misreported in software. All the 9600 cards basically use the same processor.

You'd be extremely lucky indeed to have gotten a 9600 Pro in a 9600SE box.

But although the report looks promising, you need to determine core speed and memory speed to be surer.

Another thought:

Does the installation CD include an 'overclocking utility'? If so, install it and run it (but DON'T overclock with it)

The utility would give you the figures you need.

Go to www.ati.com and download the most recent Catalyst driver. Install that. (You'll only need to run the file and follow onscreen prompts.

After that bring up Display properties -> Settings -> Advanced and click on the Tab for your display card. Have a look in there and see if there's reported figures for core and memory speeds.

(I'm not an ATi card user myself so I haven't one in front of me to check the procedure. I'll check later for information about accessing those details)

The latest Catalyst drivers on the ATi website will run that card far, far better than the driver on your CD. Drivers included with computer parts are usually out of date before the ink dries on the CD label!

oops, that was a typo. Should have been ABit IC-7

The ABit AG8 is no good to you unless you're planning on purchasing a new processor and video card as well. It's a motherboard for LGA-775 (Socket T) processors, and the board uses PCI-Express slots not AGP slot.

A new motherboard won't give you bugger-all performance improvement, and neither will an overclock on your processor. A 3GHz Pentium 4 is plenty enough for just about anything and will be for ages yet. If you want to improve performance on your PC the best thing to do is to replace that FX5200 display card, which is a kids toy rather than a real 3D card, and ensure you have at least 512Mb of RAM and preferably 1Gb of RAM.

Most enthusiasts in my circles would prefer the ABit IC-y series of motherboards for a performance system. Relatively inexpensive, very good performance and overclocking capability, very good value.

The Northbridge chipset fan on them is a weak point, but it's easy enough to get a better aftermarket replacement unit later on if you need to.

What are you using to measure that temperature. It sounds ridiculous!

No Meow, the memory interface, as I mentioned above, is referring to the line of communication between the card's graphics processor and the on-card video memory. Modern diswplay cards use their own RAM, rather than using system memory. Display cards from the ATi 9xxx series and NVidia FX5xxx series have 128Mb or more of onboard video memory and that's heaps enough for the games they're capable of running. In fact some cards have 256Mb of video memory and actually perform WORSE than the 128Mb versions because the memory itself is comprised of 'slower' less responsive chips.

There's no need for the cards to use system memory for their calculations, and if there were it would slow things down considerably because system memory is MUCH slower than video memory. The card has to prepare the image that's to be displayed on the screen. The faster the card, the more detailed and complex the image can be. The AGP bus is the line of communication between the card slot and the computer system itself. That's where the image is sent to the rest of the game, and where information about what to do about the next image is sent to the card. The game itself is run by the PC system. It deals with information about, for example, which direction you're moving in, what you're holding, what game character's are nearby or further on, what objectives you're trying to meet etc, etc, etc. Game calculations performed by the machine, image calculations …

Video cards ALWAYS suck just after you've purchased them. The price of the unit ALWAYS drops several months after they've been released, and the next, better model is ALWAYS released just after you've bought the latest and greatest available.

But there's another factor that makes it not matter if you're a person who isn't hell-bent on only playing online multiplayer in the latest game out. Games drop in price too, so if you wait until the 'latest' card has becomes yesterday's model and is cheaper, you can get heaps more games to play on it, and do it cheaper!

:D

Oh ha!

Nanosani's Pakistani? So's Catweazle's sister-in-law :D

There is a 'step' on the underneath of the heatsink and a 'ledge' at one end of the processor socket. The two need to be aligned correctly. If you are fitting a new AMD processor, the installation leaflet whaich was in the packaging should illustrate the installation procedure clearly. If you haven't got it, then download this document from AMDs website

There are also some videos to download

Also, if the heasink you're fitting has a central 'tag' on the clip you'd be better advised to use a small nutdriver to fit it with, rather than a screwdriver. If you do use a screwdriver, ensure that it has a wide blade on it. Slipping with the thing while you're fitting the heatsink can kill your motherboard. Fit the heatsink with the motherboard out of the case and supported by a folded cloth or a foam pad on a flat surface. The pressure you need to use can bend and crack a motherboard if it's not supported properly. The 'risers' which hold it in place in the system case are NOT adequate!

Sorry for the double post, but I want to be sure the topic starter has noticed this comment.

3. 64-bit

The 64-bit memory interface is NOT the AGP bus! It is the line of communication between the graphics processor and the video memory on the card. The AGP bus is the line of communication between the card itself and the rest of the computer system, and does not effect performance. The memory interface, however, is the reason why, despite having a reasonable graphics processor and reasonable graphics memory, the card itself is realatively low performance.

Modern display cards, depending on the internal architecture of the graphics processor, need either a 128-bit or a 256-bit memory interface for best performance. (The NVidia 6600GT, for example, uses a 128-bit interface but has two separate channels of it)

64-bit memory interface cards are poor performance gaming cards.

The good price/performance points in gaming cards are represented by the following cards, in order from least powerful to most powerful:

Radeon 9600XT
NVidia FX5900XT
Radeon 9800 Pro (256-bit memory interface only. Ensure it is not a bullshit 128-bit memory interface card)
NVidia 6800 GT (256Mb card only)

(Sorry I can't give price points. I'm located in Australia, and prices I provided would be relevent there only. Shop online and use a suitable price locator site to find the best deals available')

Those cards are the ONLY alternatives which can rightfully be claimed as 'Good Value' purchases. The upcoming NVidia 6600GT and perhaps the ATi X700XT might slot in between the 9800 Pro and the 6800GT, when initial release prices drop back a tiny tad.

Edit: Current price points, in Australian dollars. Do the research for currency conversion and market prices in your local area yourself. Prices based on best prices available in Australia at time of writing:

Radeon 9600XT $220
GeForce FX5900XT $300
Radeon 9800 Pro $380
NVidia 6800GT $680

1. RAM

PC2100 is all the speed you need from RAM. If you can't get hold of any PC2100 then PC2700 will be fine, and will operate at PC2100 speed anyway when installed together with the other module. RAM always operates at the speed of the powest specification module installed. Extra RAM will NOT give you better gaming performance - it will only improve the multi-tasking performance of your system. You'll be able to task switch between your game and other running programs more easily, but that's about all!

2. Display card.

Display card is EVERYTHING for gaming, and the 9600SE is NOT really a good gaming card. It's about on a level with a standard Radeon 9200 or a 9200 Pro, that's all.

Pamida, that advice from HP about needing to uninstall Windows Media Player to be able to do DVD burning is absolutely WRONG! You simply need the correct software installed on your system, and perhaps undo a bit of system software damage created by other burning software which has been previously installed, and you will be able to use your burner.

Nope. The report was enough to narrow it down, as I've mentioned, but the detail doesn't extend far enough to distinguish variants of the Ati Radeon 9600 series (or any other manufacturer/model series actually) well enough to be certain.

The 9600SE is a card with reduced features and performance which is really only competitive with, perhaps, an NVidia FX5200, while the 'full' product is a much better card.

The lack of a little accurate detail can make a big difference!

If the system has a "Do not open" sticker sealing the system case, then contact the people who sold it to you and insist they give you full, accurate and detailed information about the component which has been installed in it.

If warranty issues are not relevent, then a determination to not open the system case is simply a display of negligence toward your PC! If you can't remove a side panel, carefully move aside some cables to look at a number or carefully remove a screw and a plugged in component, then how the **** are you ever going to be able to give the PC the regular cleaning it requires to remain in good condition?

Cheers.

The root directory is the lowest level on the drive. (Or highest if you care to think of it that way) When you 'rightclick -> explore' the hard drive from 'My Computer' for example, it's the base level you start at. It's not a folder but the files and folders to be found at the starting point ;)

The boot.ini file will have entries related to both OS's The one for the drive and partition on which Windows XP is installed is the one to leave in place. See also this topic for an alternative method of bypassing the dual-boot message:

http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread11841.html

Well i dont like the idea of shitting in the bowl from which I take my food. Microsoft is an everyday part of my life and it's because of them old grannies, grandpas, little nickies can actually do something with the mystery thing named "computer".

Spot on! Most perceptive comment in the topic to date. Windows has flaws, admittdly, and a few of them are quite fundamental ones. But as much as some silly people might want to waffle on about the joys of other OS's, I haven't seen another one yet with which my old Dad can happily sit in his bungalow sending and reading mail, reading up on historical issues via the internet and researching medical problems, railway schedules and policy changes related to household accounts etc etc. Nor could another one see my grandson sitting down to a session of Jedi Knight or whatever, having fired up the system himself and reloaded his last saved game, or my wife sit down and start creating Birthday cards from family snapshots, all on the same system.

Windows was created for all that, and if it's made Billy mega-rich then bully for him. He's done a damn good job so far, and it's really only the need to stay 'legacy compatible' that stops things from progressing more rapidly and the faults overcome quickly. The marketplace controls him as much as he controls it, and possibly more!

I'm moving this topic to the Security section, because it belongs there anyway.

I'd suggest using Stinger, Trojan Remover, adAware and Spybot, all run from 'Safe Mode'.

Uninstall all the System Utilities programs you have, as it seems like you have multiple products in use. One good quality suite of system utility products is better then multiple products, especially if some you are using are old versions.

Then run Hijackthis and post your entire log as requested.

Finally, if there are any remaining services misconfigured, you can work through the list at:

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

and manually reset them all to what they should be.

You HAVE got Windows updates all installed, haven't you?

FPS:

Clive Barker's Undying
Max Payne
Jedi Knight
Outlaws

Adventure:

Blade Runner
Grim Fandango
Gabriel Knight 3

RPG:

Baldur's Gate (1 and 2)
Neverwinter Nights
(And I'd just about kill for a copy of Planescape:Torment)

Australian Rules Football and Cricket are passions of mine. Rugby I have a mild interest in (it's a MUCH better game than Gridiron ;))

Softball's another game I've had strong interest in, and in fact I've coached it at State Championship level in the past.

Hi Kaoz,

This should be in one of the Technical sections. Please describe EXACTLY what happens after you first turn the power on, step by step, up to the point where nothing happens any more. Determining at what point the process of starting up 'falls over' will help determine if it's a hardware problem or a software one, and I'll move this to the appropriate forum section - Windows 98 or Hardware.

The best way to overclock a processor is slowly and carefully, monitoring stability and temperature levels diligently and carefully as you go.

As said, you can't do it on proprietary name-brand PCs.

And Narue, people who overclock seriously don't do it to gain the performance boost really. Those people who are serious overclocking enthusiasts are generally quite knowledgeable enough to recognize that performance improvements to processors don't really translate to much system performance improvement. In fact, they're usually quite technologically proficient people to start with. Just like 'Hot Rodders' in the automobile world, the activity is a hobby/pastime valued for its own sake.

And like every human activity it has its newcomers and onlookers. One of the first things newcomers learn is that overclocking doesn't really turn your PC into a 'supercomputer', and most drift away rather quickly.

That's why the activity really only 'belongs' to enthusiasts ;)

Try Firefox, JackieB

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

It's a better browser to check with because it doesn't have all the 'baggage' and crap Netscape comes with. Internet Explorer, MSN Explorer and Netscape Navigator are an evil trimvirate ;)

Awww c'mon!

NOBODY is stupid enough to follow those instructions. They're far too obviously destructive!

ooops!!!! :o

Thanks mate. I forgot to include the hyperlink

Way to 'pimp' my own work, eh? :D

It's quite unlikely that F8 is the keypress to access BIOS setup. That's the keypress usually reserved for accessing Windows 'Safe Mode'. Most motherboards require the <Delete> key to be pressed while the system is first powering up in order to access BIOS setup, although proprietary 'name brand' PCs may have a different keypress.

See this article for further information.

Once in BIOS setup look through the menus to find the items which related to 'Boot order' or 'Boot device'. The keys used to navigate the menus and make changes will be shown onscreen, so there's no need to describe them.

You will usually have a list of entries on an 'Advanced' menu which will indicate the order of boot devices, and the most useful method is to set CD-ROM as '1st boot device' and HDD-0 as '2nd boot device'. Some older systems may have a single setting for 'Boot Order' and you need to cycle through the available options to locate the most relevent one. Ensure you Saves the changes before exiting BIOS setup.

Some name brand systems will boot directly from CD without an onscreen message, but most assembled PCs will display an onscreen message asking you to "Press a key" to boot from CD, so you need to be watching the screen during the power-up process or you'll miss it, and the system will try to boot from hard drive or elsewhere regardless.

heh heh........

Nice joke site!

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!

(For the benefit of the relative 'newbies' to computing reading this, it's NOT a guide to looking after your system, it's a joke site showing a procedure which would destroy your hard drive.)

Moved to Windows XP forum.

If you are uncomfortable with editing system files, the same result can be obtained by simply disabling the presentation of dual-boot selection.

Right-click 'My Computer' and choose Advanced -> Startup and Recovery -> Settings.

Change the setting for 'Time to display' to zero. As the default option works fine all will be OK.

(Double check first, however. The default length of time for the choice to be displayed is 30 seconds I think. Wait and see if your system boots allright without you having to make the choice. If so make the change. If not, change the displayed option before changing the delay setting.)

Replace the hard drive data cable.

Try the download section for your PC on Dell's website for a BIOS update which might have been released to correct such an issue.

Other than that, I'd suspect it's a dead or dying drive. Not EVERY drive lasts forever, after all. You might've got a dud, or a whole batch of Dells may have been inadvertantly released with dud drives.

It's only for trying to copy your data across from one drive to another. If the drive is stuffed, super cooling it might get it working for a short time, and enable you to connect it as 'Slave' and copy your data to another drive.

You would not have ended up with that message by following the instructions I linked, Noahsson. The procedure would have left you with a clean, single Windows installation.

A utility like that one would be useful if you wanted to 'sterilise' a drive for resale, Banderson, but for reinstalling Windows it's unnecessary. Deleting the existing partition and creating a new one is good enough ;)

Hi James. You're in luck.

Follow the instructions in the articles linked to in this topic:

http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread6632.html

Any other Norton products running as well? They are notorious for being the most system hungry products of their type, and I definitely do not recommend their use.

Sure you installed all drivers when you formatted and reinstalled Windows. If your system is trying to operate using generic Windows drivers for the motherboard and other components, that could cause slow operation as well.

Seen a lot of people discuss it, but I've never seen a successful method that didn't use StyleXP ;)

No worries cevans

Working it out for yourself that way is much more pleasing to see than if we had to locate the downloads for you! Good work!

Dunno, but it definitely HAS worked with drives which BIOS could no longer identify.

No, your WinXP installation will NOT be transferred to the new drive.

Easiest way is to simply delete all the folders on your C: drive, leaving only the files in the root directory of the drive.There will be a few unnecessary files still littering the root directory but they'll take up very little space anyway.

Your drive will boot from the necessary files on C: and locate Windows XP on your D: drive.

You will still be prompted about which OS to boot into, but the unwanted entry can easily be edited out from the boot.ini file.

You were asked to post any code numbers or combination of letters and numbers, that is printed on the motherboard itself. Look carefully over every square milimetre of surface. It could be anywhere, even between the expansion slots or along one corner.

Failing that, download Belarc advisor and see if that reports your motherboard id.

www.belarc.com/download