Messerschmitt

Hi and thanks. So for my second HDD I have (a 500GB seagate) should I format it as Primary or Extended? I have my 640GB Western Digital set with C & D, D being extended. I also guess I will just use windows disk management. I mean in the end creating a partition and format it it's the same thing, no matter what path you choose right?

I am sorry, I am not familiar with what t-13 is or PE.

So it seems that thru the windows XP CD you can only format C drive where you install the O/S. So can you only format the other drivers by using win XP and click right and hit format? I did not seen any option to format when installing the OS. I don't want to use any third party programs to do the formats. And if it's true that you have to format from windows intself, why are there different options when you right click and hit format in explorer, and go to Admin tools - Computer Management - Disk Management. Also what Allocation Unit Size you should select (default or 4096 or a different number). What is the difference to make the other partitions primary or extended? Should I enable Compression option when formating?

You make making decision so much easy

I fixed my issue. A full format straighten everything up. It seems that forgeting to uninstall the nvidia drivers first before isntalling the catalyst screwed everything up. Even after I ran driver cleaners and everything. However I have also decided to change my nmedia PSU as well, even tho it works good with it. I just don't want to get stressed too much with my shiny new ATI and a new WD black 640 and blow up, possibly taking my toys with it too. And next time I will make sure I won't skimp on a PSU as I don't skimp on ram, videocard, HDD brand (quite virgin with ATI so not sure how good this HIS brand is)

Then i'm definetly going with the Corsair. Thanks for the feedback The 650W with 52A is enough for future upgrades such as possible CF, SLI or state of the art graphic card (single) in 2-3 years, new mobo in that time, etc? I just don't want to have to buy ANOTHER power supply when I will have to upgrade again. Quite thinking of the 750W with 60A if it will help for the future.

Thanks for the feedback, I was leaning towords the corsair myself. Btw, isn't 4 rails * 18A = 72A?

I was looking at the 2 and they both look quite powerfull. The OCZ has 4 rails of 18A it seems and the Corsair one 1 rail of 56A. Read somewhere 1 rail might be more efficient and better for power distribution. They both seem to be the same price after rebate. Wondering which should I invest for the best value, and also looking to keep the PSU for future hardware upgrades as well. Hope crahak you will read this

Some one on another forum said that it might be because of my nmedia 500W power supply. Can a bad power supply exhibit these "slow,fast,slow,fast" symptoms with games that require the video card to spit out more power?

Basically the card doesn't run smooth in games, and when environments move you can see them go faster, then slower, then faster, then slower, etc. I'm running now the Catalyst 8.10. When I tried the 8.12 TF2 became quite unplayable as the FPS was even lower in open than on my 8600 GTS, and choppy there too, as in the right word, not faster and slower, but choppy frames. I have used driver sweeper and driver cleaner when un-installing drivers, and all. Here are the videos that show what i'm talking about. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9miYtuMUcE <-- for this look at the bilboard writing for best effect http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stSyym-155Y http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkVkD8pE-00 <-- for this look at the space dust for best effect http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjvtxMji5Ho http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqcQ0xYXTao And not really speeding up, but more choppy in the right sense. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPhKfm9h0GU

Thanks for the info, good to know I can save my money on a new mobo

So windows has a nvidia drivers integrated? Somehow I'm guessing the ATI drivers are not. I'm just asking because i'm still being haunted by the BSOD's I got from nv4_disp.dll when I had the 8600 GTS. Hopefully I won't get that anymore with my ATI card.

How did you got all that information about nmedia? Is there a review? It seems this PSU gives me no problems with my new 4870. (prooly no way to tell anyway unless the hole computer shuts down because no power Iguess). Would you suggest buying this one? http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku...mp;promoid=1048 A 500W Coolermaster for 20$? (40 without the rebate) BTW, this review says the power efficiency is over 80% http://www.modthebox.com/review496_1.shtml

So I am just running driver cleaner pro and driver sweeper + a hard delete of the above files yet they keep comming back. I no longer use a nvidia, I just bought an ATI card. Is that normal? Thanks

I have a nmedia 500W PSU (http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=18928&vpn=MP-500&manufacture=NMedia%20System) My system is a E6750, 2GB ram 800 MHZ, 1 500GB seagate, 1 DVD-RW, 2 120MM fan and 1 80MM fan on case, and just bought a HD4870 replacing my 8600 GTS. I am asking this because after I installed the video card windows pretty much forgot tons of devices/drivers. It had to re-install all my mouse, monitor, keyboard, sound, etc. It also took 3 restarts to come back to "normal" as in all drivers back online. Also during a restart, since windows wouldn't close (not even shutdown -s -f in CMD), upon a hard restart, the PC powered off completely for 3 seconds until it re-started again. Does this have to do with my power supply not being enough? What about if the video card will come under load in games, can it run out of power then but have enough power to keep on in windows? Thanks

Thanks for the feedback. I just bought myself a HIS HD4870. However my current motherboard only has a 1.1 PCI-E rather than 2.0. Does that mean the card performance is only half of what it can provide? How does this translate in FPS and performance in rendering graphics. Should I really invest in a new motherboard that can support PCI-E 2.0?

Since now ATI is being owned by AMD, would that mean it's not the best choice to own one if you are running on a Pentium? Is there any relation between the graphic card and the processor, such as in a HD4870 would run better on the AMD rather than a Pentium? Just asking, since I have never owned an ATI, I only had nvidia (4400 TI and 8600 GTS which it seems its already obsolete), and I was looking at that HD4870 which looks really good, for a very reasonable price. Also how it's the driver support for the ATI cards? Any programs you can use with them for monitoring temps, and clocks? Thanks

You mean formating first?

I see Service Pack 3 in my automatic updates list. I heard SP3 was unstable a several months ago. Did that changed? Is it now as stable as SP2 now? Is it now a standard to have SP3 like SP2 is/was? Should I go ahead and let it install it from the automatic update list? Also any point in installing IE7 since I only use Firefox (extremely rearely I would use IE for 1 or 2 sites I know they don't like any other than IE - like my bank).

Yea, I guess, I never done it before but since all you did in Riva Tuner was a slide bar I said to do it little by little. When it started freezing I lowered back to previous setting. Well, it seems rather than having a bit more clock now I must have less to be playable :/ It was the first time I ever tried to OC anything, and I guess it will be my last time. My other computer went solid for 5 years with no problems what so ever, of course never messing with the hardware. That should've teached me a lesson. Now do I have to expect to be paying all the shipping charges? I mean if I end up paying 50-100$ for the hole RMA process, maybe I should just buy a new one, maybe a 8800 GT (since I was stupid enough to buy a 8600 GTS, I paid 240$ too)

Why ram? How come I stop getting the BSOD if I lower my GPU clock?

Hi, I don't have another system to test the card unfortunately. Also the card is not overheating as it allways stays at 50-60c.

Hi there, before I go ahead and format I would want a last help attempt in regards to my problem. Now I do not know specifically if it's hardware or software but here is what happened. I got RivaTuner and I have a 8600 GTS factory OC at 720mhz. Now what I did I played a bit with it, trying to OC it a bit more until I ran in system freeze-up during game play. Well after a bit of these, ever since returned it to normal my system will still freeze during game time this time also accompanied by BSOD which says something about nv4_disp.dll errors. (all these freezes are accompanied by the looping sound, and the BSOD usually appears after 5-10 seconds if I leave the freeze continue). What I have noticed is that these freezes disapear if I reduce the clock from the factory 720mhz to 700 or even 670mhz (or the freezes are only once in the blue moon) but I CANNOT leave my GPU at the default 720mhz since my games will freeze very often causing the BSOD (TF2, L4D, etc) I have did a full un-install of RivaTuner and used programs to such as Driver Sweeper to delete all the display drives and install new ones, but the problem still persist (tried the 162, 169, 175 and 178 drives) Bottom line now is that I cannot play if I don't have RivaTuner installed and reduce the clock quite significantly from the default 720mhz. Which this of course will reduce my performance. Now do you think somehow it might have damaged the card or something is snaged in Windows and maybe a format of drive C will work out? Any other tests I can do? Formating is a big hassle and it will take me at least a full day to do it since I haven't formated it since Sept 2007

Hi, does anyone have a link to the "good" memtest then? The one I got was from here: http://www.memtest86.com/ The 3.4a And yes I have used 2 CDRW's and both failed.

What is the objective of these alternatives? I never had any problems with windows file copy.