Zenskas

The GTX 285 really is very stable and runs a lot cooler than the ATI 48xx series does. With the 4890 they had to ramp up the default fan speed, which in turn lead to more noise, just to get it from reaching 90C under heavy load! If nvidia are really running the cards out of spec then how come you can buy this: http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?...Series%20Family Thats a pretty big overclock compared to the GTX 280 which ran at 602Mhz core. So if the GTX 280 ran at that, and from evga you can get a rebranded GTX 280 (285) and get that much of an overclock on the core and memory then how unstable would it be? It has a 702Mhz core (default is 648Mhz), 2646Mhz memory (default is 2484Mhz) and a 1584Mhz shader clock (default is 1476Mhz) Now if evga can go and sell that on the street with a warranty it must be a very stable card at stock clocks. I have seen plenty of 8400GS cards with no fan, you just got to pick the one with the best heatsink and there you go, no noise! Yeah my 9600 GT is sweet! A slightly cut down 8800GT which is also a very popular card. Right now nvidias drivers are very good. I do not know if the 17x.xx series of drivers were good as I got the 180.48 drivers which came out just after I built the PC in my sig. Now I have the 182.50 drivers and they are rock solid. I have tons of games and graphically intensive apps on my PC and the drivers have not been at fault at all so far. Author of tweak guides does get into more advanced stuff. If you read his tweak guides it has advanced tweaking sections (config file editing etc) so that the people who are more comfortable with their PC's can follow them. Got no idea what happened to the OP, but I hope after all this he doesn't come along and say he went out and bought a Voodoo

Yeah ATI do have UVD and that along with purevideo are fairly similar anyway. (I personally would watch HD videos on a TV with a blu-ray disk player though rather than on a computer) But in tests here: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware...ggtx295/14.html (if you read my post) you will see that the nvidia GTX 295 beats the radeon 4850x2 and 4870x2 for power consumption even though it is a faster card (or even look here: http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item...43&page=12) . And yes the stock coolers on nvidia cards are quiet actually: http://techreport.com/articles.x/13479/7 where the geforce 8800's beat an ATI card in performance, power consumption, and noise. "This may be the quietest single-slot cooler we've ever tested (save for the passive ones), and it doesn't grow audibly louder under load." (I thought you said no matter what model they are loud ) Here is the 7800GTX stock cooler: http://www.behardware.com/articles/574-6/n...e-7800-gtx.html Nice and quiet! And I doubt an 8400GS is going to be making much noise anyway. There are a lot out there that are passively cooled so it does not matter! But yeah I am not desperately trying to make the OP buy nvidia, as I would buy either of them anyway over what he has because they would be so much better in every area! Of course you haven't, you're running XP. XP just BSODs instead, and it does that just fine with nvidia drivers. Steam user base isn't really reflective of the larger picture. Besides, most of these people likely bought whatever card had more frames per second per dollar more than anything. And I don't think it's relevant anyways, that's like saying "tell the millions of people at McDonalds that food elsewhere is better" (all the lemmings are doing it, must be good!) I don't think so. First, nvidia doesn't quite sell anywhere near 2/3 of the cards on the market, Intel is the biggest seller (also, not everyone's a gamer, and buys cards to play games). And I'd say a very large number of typical users have experienced their fair share of BSODs due to nvidia (mind you, they just tend to say "Windows sucks!" then). It's very well documented everywhere, even people like Mark Russinovich have devoted blog entries to crashes due to nvidia drivers. And I've seen nvidia driver updates break LOTS of things (like Vista's photo screensaver or remote desktop). And most of the more knowledgeable members on this forum all seem to admit to nvidia's poor driver quality (e.g. puntoMX, cluberti, jcarle, Zxian and so on). I don't really see anything backing you up anywhere. Funny that, haven't seen a BSOD once yet in the 6 months I have had the PC in my sig with a 9600GT. Haven't even seen a BSOD with another PC I have had for many years with Win XP and a geforce 4 mx 440. Dunno if it is just my luck or something, but the cards are very stable even while overclocking 10-15% (and the geforce 4 only has passive cooling in a PC with only one fan in total!) Yeah it may only be Steam, but how many people that love graphics cards to death use Steam? How many gamers that slog their PC's to LAN parties and have a great night with their graphics cards and don't have any problems? On that note I have a small group of gamer friends (who don't know that much about computers) but in all of us there is two 6600GT's, one 7600GS, one 8600GT, one 9600GT (mine-gee the mid range nvidia cards are popular!), and only one ATI (a radeon 9200SE). These guys don't even know much about computers but they come along to a LAN party, play PC games all night and don't have any errors thanks to nvidia drivers, even though they do it once every two weeks (for about 4 months) They don't even have the latest drivers! The only problems they get are network issues and mouse problems Im sure if you search around you will find plenty of people that don't liike ATI's drivers too. And nvidia has pretty good linux drivers as well. (although ATI are getting better: http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=18017&page=1 ) Have you seen Supersize me? Yeah Mcdonalds is bad. People love the taste of it but in the end it is bad for them. How is that relevant anyway? LOL I hate mcdonalds sorry The author of tweak guides is backing me up! He lives for tweak guides (literally, it is his income) and makes hardly any money but is very dedicated to writing guides in a very un-biased way(he has both nvidia and ati driver tweak guides, which are updated constantly). He started the site in 2004 and has been buying graphics cards for a very long time. If he thought nvidia was bad, he wouldn't keep buying them (with his last three cards being a 7800, 8800, and now GTX 285) and he is obviously very knowledgeable (he gets "around 700,000 unique visitors and 3 million page views a month on average"). He is a very devoted person. Read his FAQ page if you don't believe me: http://www.tweakguides.com/FAQ.html And if all of this gets un-noticed from you then go looking for some hardcore nvidia fanboys who will just keep telling you nvidia is wonderful

Have you even played many newer games starcraftmaster? I doubt you have or you wouldn't say that. Newer games are so immersive and have amazing graphics and tricked out game mechanics. Played COD 4 before? Played Crysis before? BTW the Orange Box and Half-Life 2 are some of the highest rated games in the world for PC according to metacritic. So is Bioshock. In fact the highest rated games on PC for all time in metacritic are Half-Life 2, Out of the Park Baseball(which only has 5 review BTW), The Orange Box, Half-Life 1 and Bioshock. Half-Life 1 is the oldest game there but that it because in its day it was sooo good. Now it is pretty good but not as good as newer games. I will admit Starcraft is good but don't say that most newer games are boring and crap since your PC can't even handle Starwars Battlefront 1 http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=130219 so I don't think you would have properly played many newer games.

Actually the 8400GS has Purevideo 2 while some of the older 8800 series cards do not. You can watch HD videos with an 8400GS but yeah bot the nvidia and the ATI card are heaps better than what he has, and are cheap too. BTW the guy who owns tweak guides is one of THE most un-biased people I have seen on the net...he closed his own forum because he didn't have time to moderate it when it was becoming biased so he could devote more time to writing tweak guides for games. Oh yeah if you have ever heard one of the popular geforce 8/9800's, 8/9600's or GTX series cards, then you will know the stock cooler is very quiet. My 9600GT is silent in 2D. No noise. But the 8400GS is not going to make any noise anyway cause it ain't going to be making much heat with a TDP of 40W And how come the GTX 285 only has a TDP of 183W yet an even slower radeon HD 4890 has a TDP of 190W??? And a GTX 295 has a TDP of 289W but a slower radeon HD 4870 X2 uses 290W??? Weird huh? Look: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware...ggtx295/14.html QFT. I just got rid of a GeForce 8xxx series card, and it ALWAYS sucked HARD. No matter which drivers are used. Even onboard ATI 3200 (780G) is WORLDS better. With nvidia, expect this almost daily: And those every couple weeks: BTW, it also TOTALLY sucked for HD. Much higher CPU load than both ATI card types I got... Their claims of off-loading to the GPU are borderline fraudulent (IMO). Their video decoding assist's never actually worked, using any OS (XP x86, Vista x86, Vista x64 or Win7 x64)/any vers of drivers/any H.264 codec combination. Nevermind some video quality issues in PowerDVD (severe red blotching -- again, using any drivers, any video renderer, etc). Overall, it's been utter crap since day one. Quite possibly the worst video card I've ever had. I moved to a nice Radeon and all the problems are solved! I wish I had never even bothered. No more nvidia garbage ever again, unless they're the very last manufacturer left and I have no choice at all. nvidia is also very well known for very poor drivers for other devices. I wouldn't want of a GTX 295 even if it was free. LOL funny that I have never seen those errors in my life. Or with three other PC's I built with nvidia graphics cards. But when I build a PC with an ATI card (x1650 pro) it is the one that stuff up thanks to driver issues and needed a re-install. You may have got a bad card and so may have I, BUT tell that to 64.72% of people that own nvidia cards using steam vs the 27.25% that use ATI cards with steam. Look for yourself: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ I'm just saying I like nvidia and the majority of people in this world can back me up. However it's like anything...if you have some bad experiences with one brand, the other brand looks so much better. And also the 8400GS is more powerful for gaming than the 2400 PRO. http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-2848-vie...-benchmark.html http://cybersurge.org/2007/06/09/ati-2400-...gs-in-3dmark06/ Although it does depend on the game though but generally the 8400 GS is preferred.

Yes in this case a big GTX 260 is better than any smaller card. The reason for big cards is big GPU die sizes and the need for more voltage hardware on the PCB because the card is so advanced compared with any other card made over a few years ago. Plus to keep the heat and noise down it uses a large heatsink and quiet fan which is why it is heavy.

Yep that ATI is pretty good, but HD movies will run better on a geforce 8 series card. I'm just an nvidia guy for several reasons, some of the same reasons are outlined here: http://www.tweakguides.com/Hardcon09_6.html Go down below the game screenshots and there is a heap of reasons why this guy chose an nvidia card over an ATI card. There is a lot on driver issues and the entire bit below the game screenshots, of his PC running different games, is quite interesting.

Yes it does support 5.1 surround sound and EAX like I said before. Good summary of the parts there DL.! The DVD RW is in fact a drive too as I saw the picture of the items. Cheap stuff if under $25 definitely.

Thanks for clearing that up GTK66! I have not used Win 7 yet but want to get onto testing it (to make sure I like it and it is compatible) when the official public RC comes out, so that when the final version is released I can install it on the family PC.

Yes indeed. Rammstein anyone?

No probs. That sound card is fine. And the firewire card could come in handy as many PC's don't have firewire connections normally. As they say on eBay, happy bidding!

I don't need any of it but if you can get it under $25 it would be a bargain. I don't know why, but you have sooo many threads on sound cards! Just get one you like and be done with it...I am using the integrated sound on my mobo and it is better than the sound cards you have been talking about. Just get a basic card that supports EAX and 5.1 surround sound and you will be set. The one in this hardware bundle is fine for every basic purpose whether it be gaming, music and movies. Sound quality is more dependent on your speakers!

Hey guys, just don't post each and every song your listening to every time you listen to a new one as something like this might happen: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?s=&amp...st&p=211830 Just letting everyone know Its great to find out what others are listening to though. Makes you wanna listen to some new things.

Sounds alright to me. Some useful stuff in there. The external drive case looks good. For that price you can't go wrong. Lol just saw that same item on ebay. Its start bid is $10 so don't be surprised if it goes up.

COD 4 is awesome. COD 5 is pretty good unless you are sick of WW2 shooters. Bioshock is good too and has some RPG elements as well as STALKER Clear Sky. Crysis and Crysis Warhead seem like pretty good FPS too. Crysis Warhead comes with the multiplayer component "Crysis Wars" on a separate disk which is a great multiplayer game. All of the Battlefield games are good multiplayers too. As for pure RPG games you would like Oblivion if you like Fallout. And if you are a true elder scrolls fan then playing morrowind is also fun. FEAR 2 has just come out I think. FEAR 1 and the expansions were good too. The Orange Box would be up there in games I would recommend. Doom 3, Quake 4 and Prey are also good FPS that have been out for a while. All of the Unreal Tournament games are sweet as too. Even the first one is still great to play. I would skip UT 2003 though and get 2004 as it has everything 2003 has and more. As for more RPG's Dark Messiah of Might & Magic seems pretty good. Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 are up there with good RPG's. Thief: Deadly Shadows is suppose to be good, I am going to install it on my PC soon. There you go, a heap of games to consider. Hope this helps!

Not for MPEG/XViD/DiVX/H.264 . Yeah classic meaning anything before 2005 would run on a 6200. Newer games aren't classic yet I doubt he does play newer games though or a new vid card would have come a while ago. The integrated graphics could handle even older classic games, like pre-2002 but for 2002-2005 it would struggle depending on the game. Definitely 512MB RAM would help heaps with every program on the PC though. The ATI card Volatus recommended would be even slower in the games and the only benefit of buying that would be to take the load off the system RAM. A 5200 would be better, so I'm glad he recommended that too. EDIT: I would definitely not buy that 5200 when I saw the much more powerful 6200 for a few dollars more! http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-256-P1-N399-LX-...FC4VS1MWFFSW0ZN http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-256-P1-N400-LR-...=dp_ob_title_ce There is two 6200's for ya! Or: http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-512-P1-N724-LR-...W6XS7DZ6YY3V3FT Twice as powerful as a 6200! More memory, shader processors, faster core and memory clock, directx 10 and open gl 3 support!

So your saying there is no demand for DDR2 here? It is the most popular form of RAM in Australia and is cheaper than both DDR1 and DDR3 yet not cheaper than buying it in America or Canada and PC 133 is. So everyone here in Aus still buys SD RAM off the shelves all of the time? I am merely saying that you can get cheap PC 133 RAM and if that along with a better video card is all the OP needs (and he doesn't need to do anything intensive...which I doubt otherwise he would have a better PC by now) then you can cheaply upgrade it. EDIT: BTW since you don't live in Australia, you wouldn't know anything about the "setup" they have going on here. In a local store they were going to charge me $300 for the motherboard in my sig. I got it for $200 brand new from an Australian online shop. So if the online shop still makes some profit, then how much is my local store making? There is no demand for this mobo, yet I still found it so much cheaper. If you are willing to wait a week and trust the seller then it is much cheaper. And plenty of people sell PC 133 RAM second hand nice and cheap. It would help if the OP tells us what the PC is for though. If it is for some classic gaming, DVD movies, surfing the web and MS office then would you still recommend going through the process of finding and buying a new PC, then transferring files and setting everything to the way it was?

Oops did not see that sorry (although you do say might not work with all boards, and the $5 one does not say in the listing that it is ECC). But I have seen plenty of 256MB SD RAM sticks for that same price. Like I said, I got 2x256MB SD RAM for $10. It is not hard to find them if you take a look. http://cgi.ebay.com.au/256MB-2-x-128MB-168...%3A1|240%3A1318 Or bid on: http://cgi.ebay.com.au/SAMSUNG-1GB-2x512-P...%3A1|240%3A1318 Or if you want 2GB: http://cgi.ebay.com.au/SAMSUNG-2GB-4X512MB...%3A1|240%3A1318 Or 1GB: http://cgi.ebay.com.au/SAMSUNG-1GB-2X512MB...%3A1|240%3A1318 Took me all of 5mins to find these items. I'm sure one of these will work and is a lot cheaper than the prices CoffeeFiend posted.

Don't know why SD RAM costs so much everywhere else in the world but Australia and on the other hand DDR2 RAM costs more here than most other places. What a dumb setup Here you go: http://cgi.ebay.com.au/512MB-Virtium-Memor...%3A1|240%3A1318 Nice cheap 512MB stick of SD RAM that will ship internationally for AU $5! Another one: http://cgi.ebay.com.au/512-MB-133Mhz-SDRAM...%3A1|240%3A1318 Brand new 512MB stick cheap! I don't think you have been looking very hard CoffeeFiend But yes I would go and build a new budget beast PC if I was planning on using the PC for modern programs but people don't realize not everyone wants to play that new game on max settings on a 24 inch monitor or run that advanced programming program etc. If it is just to play some older games, watch videos, and surf the web then the OP's PC will be fine once it has upgraded RAM and a better graphics card. EDIT: LOL you can buy eight 256MB sticks of Samsung PC133 SD RAM here for just AU $85! http://cgi.ebay.com.au/8-x-256Mb-PC133-SDR...%3A1|240%3A1318

Yeah ebay is the key. But a RAM upgrade is a must along with the video card upgrade then he will have a half decent computer. Integrated graphics kills as it feeds off system RAM and is hopelessly slow, with no advanced 3D features, video playback features, and raw speed.

SD RAM costs less than DDR and sometimes DDR2. I bought two 256MB sticks of PC 133 RAM and it cost me under $10 including postage! That would be the first upgrade-at least 512mb RAM. Then at least a geforce 5500 preferably a 6200 and you will have something capable of light gaming with games like UT 2004, age of empires 3, world of goo, half life, world of warcraft etc. Games that were made at least two years ago. Still thousands of them though.

Just because it supports directx 9 does not mean it will take on any directx 9 game or app. Read my post, it shows the difference between your integrated graphics and a cheap PCI geforce 6200. It says: Compatible with DirectX* 9.0 *Not all of the new features of DirectX 9.0 are supported While the 6200 is fully compatible with directx 9.0c (note the c) so will be compatible with more games and run them a lot faster because of dedicated memory, faster core clock, more texture and pixel shaders, faster memory bandwidth etc.

Yes word 2003 starts up for the first time after a cold boot in under one second on my PC with XP. Half a second for the second time. I been thinking about putting win 95 on an old PC I got lying around and using it for classic windows and DOS FPS like DOOM, quake, wofenstein, UT, quake 2 etc.

Get this: Your integrated graphics card has- 200MHz Core Clock Up to 400Mhz memory clock depending on your system RAM (in your case just 133Mhz memory clock because you only have SD RAM ) Full OpenGL 1.3 Support Compatible with DirectX* 9.0 *Not all of the new features of DirectX 9.0 are supported (as in will be slow or won't work with many DirectX 9 games) Shared memory with the system RAM A Geforce 6200 PCI has- 300Mhz or 350Mhz Core Clock 400Mhz set memory clock Full OpenGL 2.0 Support Full DirectX 9.0c Support Either 128MB or 256MB of dedicated RAM onboard (not shared with the system RAM) There you have it. No comparison. Also I would definitely upgrade your RAM like I said before. 1GB would be good. Your board supports up to 2GB but I don't know if it supports 2GB sticks of RAM so if you wanted 2GB you would be safer buying 2x1GB sticks. Just 2x512MB sticks should be OK though, or 1x1GB EDIT: And there are plenty of brand new PCI 6200's on eBay that will ship around the world.

Actually you can get nvidia geforce 8500 GT's and 8600 GT's that come in PCI. They would go nice with a 2.8Ghz CPU. If you really wanted to upgrade that system, I would upgrade the RAM from 256MB to at least 512MB or 1GB. That will make a huge difference. I did it on an old system (256 to 512)and it feels like it flies now (sort of) But since geforce 8 cards in PCI may be hard to find anywhere offline you could get a popular geforce 6200 which would increase performance by a good bit. You can also get geforce 5700's, 5500's and 5200's but anything below that would be a waste of time and money. The 6200 is the fastest PCI card I would buy before just going out and getting a new PC. As for ATI cards the Radeon HD 2400 Pro is the best PCI card and you could also get a Radeon X1550. I hope this has helped!

Yeah they probably have funny pages about loads of people. Love the comment by Steve Jobs.....and the comment made back by Bill