Zenskas

No, no, no like crahak said just because the CPU in your laptop beats your old P4 doesn't mean AMD processors are faster than Intel. It is just that your laptop CPU is a lot newer and has more advanced technology. The L2 cache on your AMD is 512KB (same as the Intel). The AMD FSB speed is 800Mhz (same as the Intel). Your AMD CPU supports technologies like MMX, Enhanced 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, AMD64, PowerNow!, and NX Bit. Your Intel CPU only supports MMX, SSE, SSE2, and Hyper-Threading (which does not help performance much, if at all). Also your AMD uses just 25W of power while the P4 used up to 69.7W. Oh yeah and the AMD is 90nm compared against 130nm on the P4 (90nm is smaller and newer than 130nm so the CPU can run even cooler and uses less power even if it was at the same clock speed) And the laptop will slow down a bit in the future, as it gets as old as the P4 was when it died, because of the junk that computers collect to slow your system down. The graphics in your laptop are better too which can help with things like playing games, watching movies, and the general quality of what is displayed on the screen. Compare your CPU to mine, an Intel Core 2 Duo E7300, with 2.66Ghz clock speed, 3MB L2 cache, 1066Mhz FSB, 45nm, and technologies like MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology, Intel 64, XD bit, and iAMT2 all while using under 65W usually under 55W. So keep your options open. In fact currently Intel CPUs are the fastest(core i7) and the best all rounders (core 2 duo e7/8xxx series). Anyway, an upgrade to 2GB of RAM will be welcomed by your laptop and should keep it going strong later on down the track when it is fully loaded with all the stuff you put on it.

Hey, try putting another graphics card in the PC (preferably a GF9800 card) and then fire up the games and see if it crashes. Use the latest 180.48 drivers from the nvidia website. You could always reformat and reinstall windows if it comes to that. A lot of people do this once even twice a year as computers get loaded with all kinds of junk unless you tweak your PC to the max and it is super stable and secure. EDIT: Check out this topic on the forums ATM http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=127855 The video card problem was fixed with a reformat. I would reformat the hard drive every time I upgraded the motherboard, boot-hard drive (of course), and the graphics card. Ram, CPU, extra hard drives, optical drive, power supply and small add-in cards do not need a reformat to work properly most of the time.

Your southbridge is usually cooled by a small aluminum heatsink, or on my mobo it is a copper heatsink connected to the northbridge heatsink via a copper pipe, but this can be replaced. It normally has two plastic pins the are diagonal on the heatsink and it can be replaced with a bigger one so long as the pins are in the same spot. I think that that heatsink/fan you have there is not really that good, although it might be better than the stock. I think that I remember someone saying somewhere on this forum that the heatsink/fan you have was on a list on a website and that nothing on the list was very good. EDIT: Here is a picture of my southbridge heatsink: http://www.legionhardware.com/pic.php?imag...4R/Image_11.jpg Notice the two white pins? They connect the heatsink to the motherboard. See how there is a pipe going from the southbridge heatsink to the northbridge one? That helps to transfer the heat around for better cooling performance.

Well I would say that it's running pretty hot. 71C on the CPU after just 20mins is pretty hot. Mine runs at just under 50C straight after completing the entire Crysis demo (not sure how long, about an hour of playing around in-game) Although 60C on your GPU isn't too bad at idle, as the 9800/8800 GT's can run a bit hotter than is preferred, your HDD's are running pretty hot. I think that when you downgraded the graphics card drivers the game took longer to crash because the older drivers ran the GPU fan a little faster than the newer ones while gaming at the expense of a bit of noise. Just a suggestion.

Hey if you are annoyed with the games bugs take a little look here: http://www.tweakguides.com/Fallout3_3.html Also read the other pages of this guide for all the information you need to tweak this game to perform the best it can.

I think this should be moved to hardware discussions. Personally I do not know anything really about the FX series of graphics cards as they were mostly BAD. So I am unsure of the proper settings but try asking under hardware.

Yes but notice the 300W PSU in your sig has an 82% rating. His 400W PSU probably does not have this sort of efficiency as it is most probably a cheapo. And the stuff you have in your PC isn't anything that would draw alot of power. Two hard drives may use 20W but one 9800GT can use alot more than that AT IDLE. Look here for system power usage of 9800GT's and the average temps: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardw...e-palit-19.html And the test PC used in this review only had one hard drive, one optical drive and only two fans. Although the CPU is more powerful the PSU used in this test is a 1000W so it is fine to have a PSU that has a higher wattage than recommended. Also notice the idle temps of the 9800's in this system? The 9800GT that may be causing the problems is way over these figures. Really it can be hard to tell exactly what the problem is. Any other ideas?

Yes it could just be that card. Check the connection to the monitor is secured and I would say 2x 18A should be ok on the 12V rails although 400W is pushing it for a 9800GT. They recommend AT LEAST 400W for a 9600GT so the 9800GT should need even more power. Take out any unneeded drives and and expansion cards. A 400W PSU with a Core 2 Quad isn't too great either. At least you are not overclocking it. Try to remove anything you don't need from the computer and ensure your graphics card fan is working also. EDIT: Oh yeah, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Wow your graphics card is pretty hot, but they can handle more heat than a CPU if thats any good news. My 9600GT idles at just 37C and when I get around to putting some Arctic Silver 5 thermal grease on it it should drop to at least 35C idle as the stuff on it ATM is not that good. Under load playing CRYSIS for about an hour it will never go over 70C and the 9600GT is not that much less powerfull than a 9800GT. Mine runs at stock speed and the heatsink/fan on it is not marketed as being ultra cool, just generally good performance. EDIT: Make sure your PC is fully clean from dust and that it has a fully working CPU fan , power supply fan and at least one maybe two case fans since you live in a hot climate.

Hey guys here is my new system: CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 2.66Ghz, 3MB L2 Cache, 1066Mhz FSB, stock Intel cooler, Arctic Silver 5 thermal grease, hopefully will be OC'ed up to at least 3Ghz soon on the stock cooler Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS4P (sweet all-copper heatsinks on north and south bridge as well as around the CPU socket on the voltage hardware stuff all connected by two heatpipes) RAM: Kingston Value RAM 2x1GB DDR2 800Mhz Dual Channel Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB 32MB Cache SATA2 (failed on me after a few days, am getting a replacement under warranty-don't buy Seagate) Graphics Card: MSI GeForce 9600GT 512MB DDR3 (nice card, played Crysis demo at 1440x900 on max settings no lag that I could see 99.9% of the time) Sound Card: Realtek integrated on motherboard (HD support, surround sound etc) Optical Drive: Lite-On 20x DVD+/-RW IDE Case: Foxconn TSAA 908 with 120mm rear fan installed (does the job) Power Supply: Trimax 600W dual 12v rails, dual fans-120mm and 80mm (fans were LOUD so were replaced with silent see-through blue LED glowing fans from Cooler Master) Monitor: Samsung SyncMaster 940BW Plus (19inch, 1440x900, 2000:1 contrast, 5ms response) Keyboard/Mouse: Fairly basic Logitech ones Speakers: Some horrible generic brand but I listen to music and game with my $50 headphones Operating System: Windows XP Pro SP3 (never gonna use Vista, I will wait for Windows 7) All up not a bad PC. Don't actually have a camera to take a pic ATM. So what do you all think?

I have to agree with puntoMX as usual here. The 3 main differences between the E5200 and the E7200: -33MHz clock speed (basically nothing) -slightly higher FSB (very little gained there too) -2MB vs 3MB cache, which probably won't make much of a difference either (depending on what you do of course). If you look at E7200 vs E8200 comparisons (3MB vs 6MB cache -- doubling the size), you'll see it makes like 5% difference (average) in games, and far less than that in most apps. So a 50% difference in cache size won't even make that much difference. The E7200 is ~50% more expensive, and will give you a whole 5% more speed sometimes. Or to put it another way, the E5200 offers ~95% of the speed for 2/3 of the price. It's a good budget CPU that OC'es nicely (it might even OC better than the E7200) The 45nm process itself doesn't really make any difference. The E5200 is based on the same Wolfdale core as the E7200 (45nm too). But it's your hard earned cash... My nearly one year old cheapo $75 E2160 (once OC'ed) runs faster than the E8400 (at stock speed) my brother bought last week for over $200... I'm planning on buying a pair of E5200's after xmas myself. Sorry but the 3mb cache and 1066mhz fsb helps a bit more than that. Look at this chart and you will see the E7200 beating the E4700, which is pretty much the same as the E5200 but with a faster clock speed and 65nm, at 37/43 benchmarks!: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/deskt...chmarks,31.html Then click on any benchmark then check the E7200 AND E4700 and click compare. I read the E7200 can OC up to 3Ghz on stock voltages and cooling, and I wouldn't want or need to take it up any more than that anyway. Anyway thanks, but I think I will go with an E7200. Here you are telling me to get a cheaper CPU, yet at the same time, people are here telling me a 9500GT would not be as good a choice as a 9600GT even though I only wanna play Halo type graphics games which would run settings maxed on my 19inch 1440x900 resolution monitor! ive run both these on a P3 866 with a GF4 MX 420 PCI but your right in that i didnt bother changing the graphic level much. hmm thought cache had more effect then that though i havent done research Yeah, I don't exactly get a huge kick playing games in minimum settings and hate lag too much. You forgot the PC case And you could leave this thread open for a year and EVERYONE will have a different view on what you should purchase for a new machine! What you said above looks fine! I cant see how that wont be good for a family machine The only thing i would add to that is 4 GB RAM, but thats because RAM has dropped so much in price now and makes that huge speed difference on Vista. Or did I? Look at the bottom of the list. It says "Case/PSU: Foxconn TSAA 908 + 600W PSU $92". Yeah thanks I reckon it will run alot smoother than our current family 'beast'. Celeron 2.4ghz, 512mb ddr 266 ram, 40gb ide hdd and an nvidia geforce 2 mx 400 to pump out the graphics...yeah. I will look into ram but considering there was one person here that recommended 1gb ram, 2gig should suffice.

Lucky you. I will try but the E7200 should be ok. I am looking at a gigabyte ga-ep45-ds3 i think which i will get. And age of empires 3 and ut 2004 would not run on the PC on the pc in my sig or if they did, at very low graphic settings. Thanks I will check these out. What I wrote was not a typo , it’s a E5200 and not a E4700. I can tell you that you will not "feel" any difference between them and since you are not willing to spend more cash on the system you would be better of keeping the difference in price in your pocket or get a better VGA card that serves you in the future. Remember that more and more applications (not the ones you use now, but who knows in 2 years?) will start to use the GPU to take some tasks over from the CPU (FPU). +1 for Samsung . SATA and 22x, not needed but a plus. I know its not a typo but the E5200 is very similar to the E4700 but 45nm. The E7200 beats them both easily. And in the future I will build a better pc for myself but a 9500gt will be fine for the family. It depends on how you convert the dollars. Logically it is sappose to be flat out same in terms of store price. The PC you are telling me about is wacked. I do not want a pentium 4, but a core 2 duo. 200-400 graphics card? I could get a 9800gtx+ in Australia for 300. 1gb ram? That ain't future proofing the comp. If I upgrade to windows 7 when it comes out, 2gb will be much better. Computer parts cost more in Australia because they 'just can' charge more money. It does not flat out at all. RRP prices in America are way lower than in Australia.

Hey I will look into the ATI card however, remember the games I will be playing. They are usually at least 2 years old and should run settings maxed out on my 19inch monitor no probs on a 9500GT. And I don't need blueray, HDMI and I don't use Vista either. The card I am looking at is the 512MB DDR3 version which is pre-overclocked and quicker than an 8600gts. I will definatly look into a GA-EP43-DS3 mobo as this got 9/10 in a recent review I just read. Or it could have been the P45 chipset version. As for RAM, I will look, but I do like Kingston. And I am sticking with the E7200 because the extra cache and FSB speed does help improve speed. The E7200 can easily outperform the E4700 which has a higher clock speed yet less cache and FSB, plus the E7200 is 45nm which helps overall. Anyway thanks for your input.

A fellow Aussie! Wow I did not know you could get an E8400 so cheap, however I don't want to spend any more than $650 on the PC. This is just the family PC, and later on I will build one for myself with the same specs but an E8400 and 9600GT. Why is it that you don´t border to look at those brands? Well atm AMD processors aren't as good as the core 2 duos for the same price and as for ATI I can't find many around the $100 mark online.

Hi thanks for your reply, I just knew prices in America would be cheaper. An E8400 retails for about $329 in Australia! The e7200 at my price including post is the cheapest I could find in Australia and is online, not in a retail shop. Just shows how much they are charging us aussies. This is pretty much the best price:performance in a CPU I could find to meet my budget. The next step up is an e7300 which retails for $249 but online is around $200 including postage. The only advantage of an e7300 over an e7200 I know of is the 2.66Ghz clock over 2.53Ghz but the e7200 can be easly overclocked to this on stock cooling and voltages.

G'day guys, I'm building a new PC for the family to use and just want to verify that I have chosen good quality parts etc. This PC will mainly be used for internet, word, music, movies, DVD burning, Macromedia Dreamweaver and Fireworks, and of course basic gaming. When I say basic gaming, I don't mean pinball but at the same time I don't mean Crysis. Halo:combat evolved, age of mythology, unreal tournament 2004, age of empires 3, those sort of games. I am not going with AMD or ATI products either. Just Intel/Nvidia. And dont say I can get a 9800gt for super cheap prices because here in Australia they cost alot. It has to be stable and quiet. So I have put together some specs and prices for you all to comment on before I buy. These are AUSTRALIAN prices including postage costs. No you can't get an Intel c2d e7200 for the retail of something like $130 in america. They cost $179 without postage here but I found them cheaper. CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 2.53Ghz $162 Motherboard: Asus P5KPL-CM OR Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L $88 (Which do you recommend?) RAM: Kingston 2x 1GB DDR2 800 Dual Channel Kit $70 HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB $100 GPU: Foxconn Nvidia GeForce 9500GT 512MB DDR3 OC version $127 Optical Drive: Any suggestions on a good cheap DVD-RW? Case/PSU: Foxconn TSAA 908 + 600W PSU $92 TOTAL including postage and GST: $639 So what do you guys reckon? I don't need a monitor, keyboard, mouse or operating system.

Hi I bought a Lite-On DH-20A4P brand new in a shop for just $36 (thats in Aussie-in America it would be less). It works great!!! I had it running on windows 98 with a P3 667MHz with 128MB RAM so it would work on yours easily. It came with a black and a white faceplate, nero 7, and is dual-layer compatible. Mine was the IDE version but there is an identical SATA version if you want. Rated 9/10 by Australian PC User. A bit loud and doesnt have the needless audio jack but fits what you want perfectly.

I got 57 seconds boot up. I have a pentium 3 933mhz with 256mb ram so win 98 runs great. This is with auto patcher december 2007 and about 15gb of stuff on the hard drive however I make sure only the things I want start on boot up.

Thats all I get. And i pay $40 a month! Thats the internet prices in Australia. And mine is one of the best valued!

For some reason alot of dells have low watt power supplys. It is smaller than a normal tower but isnt small form factor. I looked on the internet and you can get 160w psu for the SMALLER version of my computer! But 110w is the largest for mine. And because dell use weird shape psu that dont need screws I cant just buy any old thing. I have seen second hand optiplex gx260/70/80 psu on ebay for 20 bucks including postage but dont know if they will fit correctly.

Thanks for that. I will not have any printer or scanners etc attached either. I wont have the internet aswel so lan wont be used. I will only have speakers attached. And only the fan on the psu and cpu. Oh and the cd drive wont be used much at all. Will it work now? It is a dell optiplex gx150 and i heard they use differnt psu sizes. So can i get a new PSU?

I have a computer with a P3 933mhz cpu, 256mb pc133 ram, 1 hdd, 1 optical drive, integrated sound and lan and would like to put a geforce 4 graphics card in. It will be a fanless low profile card. I have an agp slot but i only have a 110w power supply. WILL IT WORK??!!

Here you all go then. I have had a win 95, 5 pc's with win 98 and 2 with XP. ATM I have 1 xp and 1 98. The 98 is sitting in my room. The XP is the family comp in the lounge. I use both computers very equally. They are both fully updated and 98 is running much slower hardware (2.4ghz and 512mb on the xp and 667mhz and 256mb on the 98) And what do you know I like the 98 WAY MORE. Boot times are THREE TIMES AS FAST! Even when I use XP's fast 'hibernate' the 98 can almost keep up. Using the unofficial updates off this site my 98 looks like Vista and has the functions on XP yet is faster. Anything I use my XP for, I can use my 98 for. And I can play DOS games without an extra emulator which is great. 98 all the way. I wish MS would release an updated version like I have for free or cheaply and be done with it. Plenty of people would use it instead of resource hungry vista which MS has already released a service pack for. They are even already working on a new OS. There you go.

Would you? I am unsure. There are some games that have physx support and this computer is 'ultimate'. NVIDIA is going to make a better one I think. I will keep it on the list for now.

Excuse me? Sorry Kel, but no. The XP vs Vista debate has gone on long enough, and when it comes to new hardware compatibility and performance, 64-bit Vista wins hands down over 32-bit XP. Also - you're missing one very big factor when it comes to 32-bit XP. Look at how much video memory he's got. That means that with all the hardware addressing that happens, he'll have less than 2GB of usable RAM! If you don't believe me, look here. That's the system properties from my setup a few months back, running two video cards (512MB 8800GT and 256MB 8600GT) with 32-bit XP. With the setup he's looking at (two 1GB graphics cards, physX, sound card), 64-bit is a must. I understand that SLI gives some performance benefit over a single card, but it's definitely not worth the money. It's more bragging rights than anything else, and then you've got your electricity bill and noise/heat to worry about. For my ultimate gaming setup, I'd much rather take a P5E3 motherboard (x38 chipset, DDR3) and a single 8800GT for the time being, and then wait for the next gen nVidia cards to come out. If the leaked specs are anything to go by, spending $1000 now on graphics cards would be a complete waste of money. OK. I think Vista Ultimate SP1 64bit with 4gb ram will do ok then. Just remember I'm not going to buy this beast, just create a list of the best parts. So I will stick will quad sli and update it to the newest, best cards as they come out. ATM I only have a 2.4ghz celeron with 512mb ram, 40gb hdd and 32mb integrated graphics! So this is just a dream pc. I might change it to a skulltrail mobo and dual cpu but I will check out the specs. This is more of the ultimate standard gamer/enthusiast, not server grade type stuff. Might change the RAM over too. Thanks I will put Vista on it. And I also intend to add a huge 'ultimate games' list to go with it.