Zenskas

You cannot SLI them, but you can have the GTS 450 as the main GPU doing the work, and the GT220 can let you run extra monitors plus you can use it as a Physx card which gains you performance increases in games with Physx enabled over using just the GTS 450 by itself.

Fans making weird noises before the noise goes away is not uncommon. It happens with cheap older fans, for some reason when they are left to spin for a little while they stop making a noise. If it bothers you, it wouldn't be hard to find a fan you could use to replace the noisy one. Would cost you $5, or if you look through other people's retired PC's you could no doubt find a suitable fan.

Yes indeed, the 460 is great value for the price and SLI works wonders. Am actually contemplating not building an ITX system, but instead upgrading to an i5/i7 rig with a GTX 460, full sized mobo etc and keeping my current case. Then I could always get another 460 to SLI if I wanted for performance far better than a 480 or 5870 at a similar price.

Ha I have a lot of room in my PC, especially with the HDD cage out and the HDD in a 5.25" bay using an adapter. LOL yes I axed it, a friend of mine owns it so I still get to see it sometimes. Over here the 460 cost about $40 less than a 5830 yet beats it in every test. Plus uses less power, runs cooler and overclocks enough that it BEATS a 5850! Mad card, finally NVIDIA came up with a good GTX 4xx card! Was originally going to get a 5850 when I build a M-ITX system but now a 460 would suit me better. They are smaller too which is a plus for when building a system so tiny. Actually I think it's Palit that make a non-reference 460 which is just 190mm long yet comes overclocked to be as fast as a 5850! But don't like the look of the cooler so was going to get a Galaxy GTX 460 Super OC. In fact here's the Galaxy card review: http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/3405/galaxy_geforce_gtx_460_super_oc_1gb_video_card/index.html It also compares the Palit card plus a GTX 470, 5830 and 5850. On average the Galaxy 460 beats the 5850 which is about $100 more expensive! Also SLI scales awesome on these things, two 460's are pretty insane for the price usually beating a 5970. But I'm restricted to one card in a ITX system I should probably take some pics of my main rig to show you guys, but first it need a dust clean

+1 to what puntoMX said, Coolermaster do give great value in their low end aftermarket coolers. Look in my sig, on the AMD-BOX I have a Coolermaster TX3 which is a sweet cooler for the price. Very quiet, cools much better than stock cooling, looks nice, very solid and very easy to mount. Although if you wanted even better performance the TX3's big brother, Hyper 212+, is an amazing mid range cooler that will last through CPU upgrades. It's pretty much the same as a TX3 but uses a 120mm fan instead of a 92mm, so it's more of a standard full sized tower heatsink. I have experience with many Coolermaster coolers including the TX3, 212, 212+, N620, V8, and V10, but would say the TX3 and the 212+ are the best value. Steer clear of the V8 and V10, they are awful coolers for the price and are poorly designed.

Not a bad little machine, I sold off my Shuttle above, but am eventually planning on building a miniITX system based around a Silverstone SG06 case. Probably be a Core i5 750, Gigabyte's new M-IXT mobo, 4GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM, 1TB drive, and one of the awesome new GTX 460's. Just loved how small Shuttles and ITX systems are! My Lian-Li K62 is about five times bigger than my Shuttle was

Well you haven't done too bad at all, the Xigmatek Pure Black case is a very nice case for the price. It has spots for extra fans plus having a black interior makes it look a lot nicer than even many $150+ cases with bare metal interiors. One thing I would do is grab a 120mm fan for the rear as it only comes with a single front 120mm fan. I wouldn't bother about having two side 120mm fans installed, it should run cool enough as is. That case is fine for when you want to upgrade later too, it will take 285mm long GPU's, and has a cutout behind the mobo for easier aftermarket CPU cooler installation. I did notice was the mobo was pretty average, but budget Asus boards are decent so glad you were able to get one of those instead

HDD's don't really loose performance, it's just the fragmentation and the accumulated junk on the PC. Reformats usually fix this CoffeeFiend was mostly right but was pretty harsh in saying it, calling all of them utter junk and basically made them sound worthless. Big deal there is some older gen stuff, looks like you got what you wanted when you really needed it. In the end parts are only going to come down more so when want something truly decent it will not have ended up costing much less just to buy it right now. Those cheapo Xigmatek cases are not as bad as Coffee thought you were getting, nothing wrong with them at all. GT220 is actually not a bad budget card either, at least over here it costs only as much as a 5450 yet is double the performance. Uses more power but it's still pretty low (I have one of both cards!). Good OC from an budget PC, no changes to voltage and I'm guessing it's on a stock cooler so good work! As for building times, you guys don't know what taking your time is. It took me about 2.5hrs to build the top PC in my sig, then another hour to get the OC working stable. But it is one of the neatest PC's around as it has a large window so needs to be! Always get complemented on its looks and tidiness which makes me feel like I have done a solid job. Keeping cables neat is important when you have 12 fans in a PC without any grilles protecting them from stray cables. It's also far easier to remove parts for cleaning, try getting a 28.5CM long triple slot GPU outta a case when it has a mass of cables on top of it EDIT: The CPU in that PC you got is not bad at all actually! I'm typing this on an AMD box with a budget Athlon II x2 240 which is absolutely brilliant for general use so since yours is higher up then you should be getting even better performance. Outta interest, I noticed it only came with a cheapo CoolerMaster case so which Xigmatek case did you get with it instead?

Hmm it should run OK at 1024x768 using my config file there. Have you tried playing it with that config yet?

True, try getting into a game and seeing if it runs at 640x480. BTW what is the specs of your laptop? CPU, RAM and GPU?

Hmm could be something to do with playing it on the comp of yours? I found upgrading from my 9600GT (already better than your current card if I'm not mistaken) to a GTX 260+ OC'ed card made the game so much better. That and fixing the connection issues my modem was having Beta was pretty decent and retail was better but it has had some serious updating since then and is now even better! Like all BF games they get lots of fixes and new features over time with a heap of patching within the first 6 months Even BF2 which is a pretty old game now got a very large update sometime earlier this year.

Back on the topic of P55 vs X58, another difference that I don't think has been mentioned (only skimmed through some posts) apart from the socket and RAM configuration is the amount of PCI-E lanes. Generally your standard X58 board with support at least two GPU's running at full x16 speed while a typical P55 board will only run them each at x8 speed. Realistically a difference of a few percent performance loss maximum but if you are running more than two GPU's then an X58 board would be better suited to the job.

There are loads of other ways to make it run faster too such as running in DX9 mode, updating your GPU drivers (IMPORTANT YOU DO THIS!), disabling background tasks/services from running before you play etc. Changing your sound type to headset in the in game menu can help give you an extra frame or two as well. Here is a super fast config that I created (just copy it into the "settings" file overwriting the old text). Settings file is located in "My Documents\BFBC2" and is called "settings.ini". No settings in the "GameSettings.ini" file really affect performance. [WindowSettings] Width=640 Height=480 Fullscreen=true RefreshRate=60 VSync=false [sound] Quality=low VoipEnable=false SpeakerCount=2 [Graphics] Effects=low Soldiers=low Vehicles=low Overgrowth=low Undergrowth=low StaticObjects=low Terrain=low Shadows=low Bloom=false HSAO=false MSAA=0 Water=low MainQuality=custom Texture=low DxVersion=9 Aniso=0 Detail=low RenderAheadLimit=0 Fov=65

Here is a P45 board that supports both too: http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2870#sp

No I saw a Gigabyte mobo with two DDR2 slots and two DDR3 slots. Was for system RAM, nothing to do with onboard VRAM. Have a search on Gigabyte's site, I can't be stuffed ATM EDIT: Kelsenellenelvian has found one, I also believe I saw a P45 board with DDR2 and DDR3 support as well as an AMD board or two made by Gigabyte.

I have seen a few mobo's with two DDR2 slots and two DDR3 slots. Made by Gigabyte if I remember correctly. Can't remember the model but should be too hard to find. Also can't remember if they were AMD or Intel...

@ puntoMX: Yeah good idea, DDR3 is now cheaper than DDR2 and you would be far more futureproof. @ CoffeeFiend: PvZ rules... It's far behind but again you can't exactly get much gaming performance from a laptop without spending a bit Haha the passive 4670 in my Shuttle does OK too, way overkill for the Pentium 4 but I sold my "LAN-BOX" so need to update my sig... But yeah I would say a 5770 would be a decent choice if you were to get a desktop for gaming. A 4850 would be OK if you can get one second hand cheaply. I know you can get them for well under $100 second hand here in Aus which is $100 cheaper than a 5770 new.

Couple of things you can do: Run your games at low resolutions like 800x600 in a window so they don't look stretched. Ensure you have all the latest chipset/video/sound/DirectX drivers. Defrag your HDD and do some basic maintenance such as getting a program like CCleaner to remove junk files, then do a virus scan, do a spyware scan, download and install any windows updates etc. These won't help much with gaming but you could have a virus that can slow down even old games. Play old games. There are loads of great old games that will still run fine. Or modern "indie" games will most likely run fine too such as Peggle, World of Goo, Audiosurf, Torchlight, Plants vs Zombies etc. I even play these games fine on a tiny 10" netbook with 2GB RAM, 1.66GHz CPU and a really slow 224MB Intel GMA 950 GPU. Maxing out your RAM was a bit of a waste but hey, you can always take that RAM out and put it in another laptop should you decide to buy a laptop with a better CPU+GPU anytime soon. Hopefully you will be able to get some enjoyment out of it now And CoffeeFiend: Sure a 4850 would kill his 3200 but remember it's a laptop and even high end laptop GPU's get beaten by middle class desktop GPU's. Oh and I wouldn't recommend a 4850 anymore either. If you were to get a desktop get something like a 5770 or better. Nice new DX11, super cool running, very low power consumption and a good bit faster than a 4850 while using less power too. I recently built a PC with a 5770 and it's great. Not quite as fast as the GTX 260+ OC in my main rig (otherwise it would be in that) but a very decent performing card especially for it's size.

Hey, is your nick: "Ženskaš" ?.. My online nickname is just "Zenskas", no little symbols above my name

Yeah memory speed is not that important, so long as it keeps your FSB happy you won't notice a difference between say 667 and 800MHz DDR2 (any 800MHz RAM will work with a 1600MHz FSB). I have had my 800MHz RAM running at over 900MHz and saw a 0.5% increase on average in intense game benchmarks for starters. Doubt you would notice the increase of speed in web surfing and basic use.

I've got a Samsung SpinPoint F3 in my main rig and it's great, one of the fastest 1TB drives too thanks to the use of 500GB platters. But you can't go wrong with a Western Digital either and the blacks are speedy and reliable AFAIK. If it is just for mass storage then the WD green drives are perfect. They are very quiet and use low amounts of power like CoffeeFiend said. Good for storage/backup but for OS/apps get a standard 7200RPM drive.

Good ideas there. Could be overheating, seems likely if you had trouble with your GPU before.

A bunch of people here have...

Yeah I just would like it exactly like it was before. Looked fine, now everything is big and harder to understand. For example, sticky threads are no longer separate, they are just at the top. It is also harder to tell which topics I have already read as the icons are all different. Also, it still needs me to log in every time I visit.

I have to agree with you there. I don't like this one bit. I understand the frustration some people have when trying to get someone off an old OS and onto a new one, but this doesn't feel like MSFN anymore. Not as easy to see stuff and more scrolling needed. I would definitely like an old skin which looks just like it did beforehand.