Zxian

Moved to Software Hangout

I haven't even read the whole article yet, but there's one part that worries me from the get go... max temperature of the FX-74 is 56C, and yet it's got a TDP of 125W? You'd need a pretty good heatsink to pull that off. Their testing pushed it to 60-something C anyways...

I beg to differ...Cool'n'Quiet does make a considerable difference on many systems. I built my girlfriend's parents a system a while back, and enabled Q-Fan (Intel's equavalent to C'n'C), and now the system is almost inaudible compared to the rest of the house. There is a difference with these features enabled.

To save you some worry about the missing 4 pins when using a 20-pin PSU on a 24-pin motherboard - take a look at the specifications of power supplies. They're providing only a limited set of voltages (-12, -5, GND, +3.3, +5, +12). Which physical cable out of the 20 or 24 that go from PSU to motherboard is most of the time a moot point. The 4 extra wires are each carrying a 3.3V, 5V, and 12V line, as well as one ground wire. If you're really at the point where you're straining the power lines from your PSU, then you need to upgrade it (at this point, you'd probably have dual video cards, and a quad-core CPU ). As jcarle showed, you can plug a 20-pin PSU into a 24-pin motherboard without too much trouble. Formatting a hard drive has very little to do with CPU at all, which is why it's not benchmarked. I'm sure that the difference in formatting speed would be negligible across various modern processors, and is most likely dependant on the speed of the drive itself.

*waves hands magically* Done.

Not to mention that you can get the same CPU-only performance off the E6400 (cost: ~$300 CAD) that you can for the FX-62 (cost: ~$975 CAD). Price/performance ratio wins for the Core2Duos. Even with AMD's price drops, the market is shifting really really fast.

Easy people... easy...

Did you even read the electric sheep homepage? It says exactly why it connects to the internet while it's running... It communicates to the "sheep server" to download the sheep created by other computers. Your computer helps render the final images that are shown on your screen. There is absolutely nothing dangerous about this screensaver... Read the info people... read the info. It's not the government trying to steal your information...

Happy birthday!!!

And that's why I listen to jcarle when I make my hardware purchases. He's a walking Intel encyclopedia.

Hehe... I just found the perfect one for you. Electric Sheep It may not be all 3D, but it's definately flashy.

I think you and I are actually saying the same thing. Sure, foobar's got a different GUI than winamp, but it's also not a very intuitive GUI for most users. That's why I say it's "difficult".

Your system should be fine with Outpost. I can't see any reason why your system would slow down with it installed. A P4 2.8GHz with 512MB of RAM is not a slow system. Comodo is a good free firewall. It's easy on resources, and passes just about every leak-test out there. To be honest though - Windows firewall is more than you should need. I've been running without a firewall (or anti-virus for that matter) for about 4 months now, and I haven't had any problems. I connect to the internet at various places (home, university, friends) and I've never seen a situation where a software firewall would help me. Keep your Windows up to date and you should be fine.

Then you've come to the right place. Did you get most of the answers that you were looking for? jcarle could better inform you about the differences between chipsets than I can, so if you want the nitty-gritty explanation, you'll have to wait on his reply.

I'll agree with SilverBulletUK - *bows in cluberti's glory*. That's impressive work! Good job on tracking down the cause...

Socket 775 has a lot of variation in it. CPU compatibility for Intel CPUs typically goes by socket and chipset. AFAIK, you'll need the 945 chipset in order to run Core 2 Duo CPUs. AMD's typically work by socket for the most part, and then by whatever the motherboard can handle (My Abit NF7-S motherboard can handle up to a XP 2500+ if I remember correctly, but it's currently running a 2000+). As for wanting a particular chipset - it comes down to compatibility and features and performance. The system that jcarle specced out for you will be stupidly fast compared to your old system (I know - I've built several similar computers, and they make my XP 2000+ look like a slug on valium). It also has the futureproof where it's needed - at the motherboard level. You'll be able to upgrade to any processor that's on the market today. Just imagine a year from now when the X6800 has come down to being only $100 or so... you'll be able to pop it right in and go from there. Want a new video card? PCI-E x16 isn't going anywhere for a LONG while. Need more RAM? Just buy more and pop it in. The system as it is will handle Vista - albeit not incredibly well. A beefier video card and a dual core CPU will help in that regard. My suggestion though, is that you get what's listed there and then upgrade it when needed. Prices will have come down considerably by the time you ever get around to running Vista. And as a last note - being familiar with one CPU manufacturer doesn't mean that you have to be locked in to them forever. Intel fell behind a bit a year or so ago, but they've really thrown a big curve ball at the market. The only reason AMD is still in the running is because they slashed their prices by a big margin.

Go little guy... beat up your dad!!! (You are training him, right? )

@sudeepg123 - If you have to ask that question, then you shouldn't be asking. If you had the ability to legally acquire Vista, then you should also know what format you can get it in. Vista is not for the public to download!

Discussion about the official Service Pack 3 from Microsoft (due out in early 2008) will continue to be allowed. There is no reason why we can't talk about this. Any discussion about the "XP SP3" ISO that's floating around the internet will be dealt with accordingly. Don't worry... we know how to deal with topics like that.

Foobar seems very difficult to setup to get the way you want it. Sure... it's got all the configurations you'd like, but it takes a lot of time to get it that way (if you don't know what you're doing). For me - Winamp is taking a whole 15MB of RAM... that's 5MB more than Foobar, and it took me zero time to configure. Not to mention that my entire media library is loaded as well, meaning I can search my 30-ish GB of music instantly. @nitroshift - thanks for the contribution. Looks like an interesting app - the recording feature is definately nice.

Either LaTeX or Word would be my choice. For most things, Word will do you just fine, but if you need to submit the document itself to your supervisors/professors, then LaTeX might be a better option. (For all the reasons stated above)

Downloading any copy of Windows from the internet is illegal, unless you got it from Microsoft themselves (MSDN, Connect, etc etc). Topic Closed

@hp38guser - I'd also like to help take over the project. I've got plenty of hosting space to hold the files, so that's not a problem for me. I've taken a quick look at things, but I'm not all too familiar with Inno setups. Mind e-mailing me or adding me to your MSN for a little help?

Caps and double-posts removed... @3398495 - One thread is all that's necessary. Writing in all caps makes it very difficut for many users to read.

I've got all the original files mirrored on my hosting. www.zxian.org/nerolite PM me if any of the links don't work.