Vitalix

Have you updated drivers? Sometimes new drivers are horrific for certain games. IF you have, try rolling the drivers back to what you had when you first installed the machine (the CD that came with your vid car). Any difference? If so, then new drivers no good for CS:S. If not, check if you have apps running in background like anti-virus. I know in my other P4 PC, I have Norton AV 2002, and for some reason after about 4 hours, it just consumes 50% of my CPU just sitting there. Everything runs like crap if it is on... Too lazy to uninstall, have to get Trend soon...

U might be OK. Do u have a PCI video card? If not, pick one up at Compusa or something, should be like $30 or so. Plug it in. Your PSU is probably WAY too weak to power up the 7800GT. But it should fire up a PCI video card. Also, try another PSU, if you have one. It may be the PSU that took the brunt of the shock, and not the mobo and vid card. You can always return the 2 items to Compusa and say they are incompatible.

I have heard that they released the crossfire to early. Lots of problems; they rushed it to market a little too soon. As of right now, the nVidia cards rock ATI in most games. Some may say b/c the ATI drivers have not caught up yet. It comes down to upgrade path for you. If you game a lot, then the only upgrade you may need a year from now would be just a second SLI nVidia card. If you go ATI, you will have to sell off your video card and get 2 new nvidia SLI cards. Both have merits. One is less sticky. If you go nVidia now, you just buy a second one later, but will have to shop for one with the same stepping (preferable) or at least the same type of GPU. The upside of the ATI approach is that when you do upgrade to nVidia pairs down the road, the video cards will likely be cheaper at that point in time (e.g. the 7800GT which is $320 now might be $220 then).

Hmmmm.....have you tried to finagle the flux capacinator?

Amen!

I'm an OCZ guy on the memory tip. Are you going low voltage TCCD style or Winbond your way to 3.5V on memory? If you're up for the challenge, here's 340FSB running 3-4-4-10. Geil ONE W. **** near impossible to find.

I would just skip that molex. This is for the 6-pin PCI-E to molex adaptor, right? Is this a similar adapter?

Depends on the rig. For a basic computer for surfing the net and using Excel, sure basic PSU would certainly flip the bill. But if you're using a 7800GT PCI-Express video card and plan to overclock, the system will liekly get very unstable and will artifact/reboot frequently under a consistent heavy load. I've had a couple friends who've had problem with their gaming machines, and once they updated the PSU to the 450-550W range PSUs from OCZ and Antec, their problems immediately disappeared. I think it's a matter of QC as well. A $100 PSU will probably have a failure rate of maybe 1 in 50, b/c it's a pretty big investment and overclockers/enthusiasts talk. A $25 PSU I would think would have a much higher failure rate.

Cleaning out the case would certainly help the temperature situation, but from what you are describing, it sounds like you have either a loose CPU heatsink, bad memory, or some corrupt sectors on your hard drive. You can do a thorough check of your hard drive by right clicking and using the tools. Windows will tell you it will have to do it at boot to get access to the drive. Reboot. Let it do its thing. You might want to download SP2004 (Google it) and run it. It is a burn-in/benchmark software like Prime95. Try a test to attack the memory. Let it run. If it's solid for over an hour, your memory is fine. Next, put a load on the CPU. If the CPU heatsink is loose, your CPU will get too hot and the motherboard will shut the system down. If both are good, and your HD is good, the the problem is likely the power supply. Also, any consistencies in the event viewer for Windows right before these reboots in either the application or system log?

I second the NEC! I've bought at least 5 in the past year building various PC's for people and they've been rock solid.

What type of PSU is it? The PSU may not have enough juice to fire up the mobo with the video card. Are you running SLI? Some boards need a molex plugged into the board itself or they behave goofy (at least my eVGA NF41 needs one for SLI/OK with a single card).

Yikes! With that rig, DEFINITELY spend the loot on an OCZ, Antec, Seasonic, or PC Power and Cooling power supply. The 7800GT eats up 25 amps on the 12V rail by ITSELF! What are the amps on that PSU rated for? If you plan to overclock, definitely spend the extra $70 on a PSU. One big pop, and you could have a lot of expensive spare silicon.

Hey all, Trying to copy some files from server to XP workstations, but keep getting PATH TOO DEEP and NETWORK NAME NO LONGER available errors. I can map to the machines and browse them fine! Just can't copy anything to them!! I can copy from the machine to here but that's it. Anyone ever see this! This is critical for our LOB, any help certainly appreciated! Thanks in advance as always!

Hey guys and gals, I believe I've seen this asked before, but could not find it in the search. Does anyone know how to change the files on the Windows CD (XP Home) to accept OEM numbers? I believe this is done by changing some numbers at the end of a certain file, but I forget. Please let me know of any links or if someone may know of this message in the forum. Thanks in advance as always!

Hey guys and gals, Is there a setting in the AD GPO (or even local security policy) where I can permit a list of software that can run in administrator mode? We are trying to get a font server which requires admin rights on the desktop. The problem is that we do not want the users to have admin rights to install software or have other fun-with-admin type things. Can we set a list of software that can run as an adminsitrator on the machine, but not have the user account as an adminsitrator? Thanks in advance as always! Title Edited - Please follow new posting rules from now on. --Zxian

The 100MB/SEC is the max speed of the IDE interface. You would need 2 or 3 drives in a RAID-0 stripe to reach 100MB/SEC. The new SATA standard is 3.0Gb/sec (which is about 380MB/SEC) really means nothing unless you have an array of like 6 disks in an enterprise setup linked.

Try booting in safe mode (hit F8 repeatedly when BIOS screen is on its way out) and select safe mode. Sometimes you can add the new drivers if Windows doesn't blow up. If not dice, take all the INF and SYS files for your new hardware from the driver folders, and copy them to the respective folders (c:\<WINROOT>\INF and c:\<WINROOT>\system32\drivers) and hope that Windows can find them. The problem is probly that Windows can't find the driver to access the motherboard chipset. If safe mode fails, copy the INF and SYS files to the folders on the drive, and then reboot using safe mode. Most times, it should find the new hardware.

Then definitely DO NOT get the LANParty! It's truly an expert board and typically does not play well with others. Takes lots of tweaking before getting it running at full speed and it's extremely particular with memory (U need to drop some loot on the mem to run a LANParty board). A friendlier board is the ASUS A8N-SLI. The only difference in flavors is items in the package (i.e. cables, tie-downs, velcro wraps, goodies). The A8N may be a good choice for you b/c it has the overclocking options there (including memory to 3.5V via jumper) and is a very reputable board that is plug and play friendly. Just remember that if you get good ram (like 2-2-2-5 or 2-3-2-5) to go into the mobo BIOS and manually change the speeds to reflect that. Most motherboards simply take a safe approach, and virtually all go 2T. You really want to go 1T on the command rate (you'll notice a swift improvement) unless you are running 4 blades (ALWAYS better to go 2 big blades than 4 small blades unless you have a server and run things in the background).

What will you be using the PC for? For gaming? Check this link for some more current setups (FX-55 being lowest on this chart - for the FX53, assume about 15-20% less performance) $1250 gets you some serious hardware! If I were you, I would go for one of the SLI motherboards. The problem with the FX is that it is legacy, cannt step up to PCI Express or SLI without selling all your hardware and buying from scratch! My rig, which I got for a little under $1300 is: NZXT Lexa Case (500W dual rail PSU is solid! - runs my system with under 2% flux on rails) AMD Athlon64 3800+ X2 (running at 2.4GHz - stock hardware 25/45C idle/load) EVGA NF-41 NForce4-SLI Mobo 1GB OCZ DDR3200 Platinum Rev 2 (TCCD~ 2-3-2-6 @ 240FSB) EVGA 7800GT NEC DVD-RW 16X 160GB Seagate SATAII (Onboard sound - great unless you have like 12 speakers in your office) I got the mobo free with the 7800GT promotion (at Newegg, not sure if they are still running that). An Asus A8N-SLI will do as well, or any flavor of the nForce4 SLIs. No video cards in the lists? Careful with the ATI chipsets on the mobos unless you plan to go Crossfire (I've heard that it was rushed to keep up with SLI and not quite ready yet). I'm assuming you overclock of course! If not, you could save a couple hundred bucks, probably.

The average HD (7200RPM, 8MB Cache) pumps out around 65MB/sec (sustained transfer rate). 3.0Gb/sec is the same as roughly 375 megabytes per second. You would need 6 of these HDs (in RAID-0 no less) before reaching 3.0 GB/sec. For a onesy-twosy setup, whichever benchmarks the best should be the one purchased. The GB/sec meter is really targeting the enterprise businesses setting up arrays. From an enterprise perspective, Seagate is standard. We have had good experiences with WD. Seagate has longest warranty (5 yrs). WD is 3 years. Both have top-notch support STAY AWAY FROM MAXTOR! Bad things have happened to us...

The only downside of 2X1GB RAM is that they do not typically respond well to overvolting. They tend to also not overclock as well. Any 2-2-2-5 DDR400 RAM will virtually always function as DDR500 RAM (just at 2.5-3-3-8 or 3-4-3-8 - depends on your blades). I've never bought RAM based on initial DDR speed, but on the timings they can run. If you compare the average DDR500 RAM, you will see timing like 3-4-4-8 or 4-4-4-8. Drop that ram down to DDR400, and I bet you it will run 2-2-2-5! I think it's just a naming game. The raw difference in performance benchmarks is typically marginal (5-8 FPS in games), but that can be critical if you're running around 30FPS. Could mean the difference between eye candy on or eye candy off.

Unless you play games, then everything means clock speed. Cache is most useful for rendering and compression. If you use Adobe products or are into video encoding/decoding, then the opteron is better. The buzz with the dual-core opterons is they overclock very well, and use low voltage. From my experience with both, they run almost identically, with the opterons better at rendering tasks (b/c of the cache). If you're building to game, the X2 is better (same performace at a cheaper price point). Some say the Manchester cores (512K cache X 2) do not OC as well as Toledos (1MB cache X2), but that is luck of the draw. Depends on the chip only. I've seen 3800+ X2 clocked at 2.8GHz on air. Mine runs at 2.4GHz on air with memory at 2-3-2-6 (1:1) at 240FSB and benchmarks at 4800+ Toledo levels in Sandra. I took it up to 2.7GHz but was uncomfortable with the heat (55C at load) and did not want to spend more $$ on cooling. But ultimately, if you're building for gaming, the extra cache does not help (at least today - as games evolve, this may make a difference in a couple years).

The biggest difference is for overclocking. The LANParty support memory voltage up to 3.5V (enough to fry any RAM not of the Winbond variety). Some RAM chips (like OCZ Gold Vx) need 3.3V to 3.5 to get max push and highest HTT rates. The non-LANParty board likely tops at 2.9 Volts for memory. The LANParty also gives you options for LDT and Northbridge overclocking. If you plan on using TCCD or the like, or don't plan to get overclock severely (remember you will spend much more on cooling and have a louder machine since you will need more intake and exhaust fans) then the first option is fine. Another item to consider is that the LANParty board is a niche board. You will always command top dollar for it when you sell it on Ebay (or wherever) b/c that board is like a Ferrari to overclockers.

Hello guys and gals, Does anyone know any SATA RAID controllers that support duplexing? We'd like to get a 15-slot SATA chassis and would like to get a controller that will take up 16 devices. Right now only the highpoint rocketraid 2240 supports that, but no mention of duplexing. Obviously, we're afraid to run 7.5 terabytes on a server and have a RAID controller fail, making everything inert until we replace the RAID card. Is anyone here using any devices such as these? Anyone have any recommendations, perhaps on smaller 8-port cards that are daisy-chainable? Thanks in advance as always!

According to settings, TTL is set for one day. However after one day, it looks like nothing has moved yet. The move happened yesterday (27 hours ago) and still no updates in DNS. DHCP shows leases for the new 60 subnet, but no changes in DNS.