jmmijo

Nope, you just install Windows XP onto one drive or partition and get it all updated and running properly then go and install Vista. During the setup process you will have a choice to setup Vista on another drive or partition. So really this is the only thing extra you need, a second HDD or a large single HDD that has been split into two partitions Both Vista and XP have built-in Boot Managers that allow you to select the OS you want to load along with a menu option.

Most likely yes, I've seen XP Pro want a reactivation with as little a enabling my onboard sound for testing purposes As for game compatibility, your best bet is to dual-boot with XP Home/Pro 32-bit and then on another partition or HDD, to install Vista onto. This way you can pick which OS is the default and which is the secondary for running games that have issues with Vista. This is pretty much what I do as I play Lineage 2 a lot and that freaking GameGuard is teh suk :evil:

I got mine at Fry's Electronics for $49.95 (USD)

Yes the old addage of better to be safe then sorry applies perfectly to this situation as well My Thermaltake ToughPower 650 should be enough as well but I was having some random freezes and lockups. Without changing anything other then getting one of the W0099 SLI PS Units, this resolved that issue. So it would appear that SLI mode does indeed take a lot of power to work properly, I would hazard a guess a minimum of 850 or higher is the real requirement for SLI or quad-SLI mode. The nice thing about this unit is that if I do decide on going to quad-SLI mode I can easily add one more of these PS's into my chassis as the dual-stacked cards require (2)Two SLI power connectors per card, so you need (4)Four total power connectors.

The link to VLC Media Player and I think you can uninstall the current WMP11 from Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel

Nice, so nVidia has updated the drivers to allow frame buffer size differences, well, that would only mean that it must ignore the extra memory on the card with more so they match up properly in SLI mode My thinking is why would you want to mix cards this way unless you can't find another 256MB card to match up ?!? Since both 256MB and 512MB cards are readily available, it shouldn't be an issue currently but hey, if you want to try it out then post your findings after you build the box. The parts you are picking seem to be just fine for most gaming needs, I'm currently still running an Athlon 64-X2 4800 with 2GB of DDR400/PC3200 and a pair of WD 74GB Raptor's in RAID ZERO mode. The only thing I would recommend to you is getting a dedicated SLI power supply instead of taking it from the main PS Unit. I use the Thermaltake W0099 for this along with one of their ToughPower 650 Watt units for the main I also just recently upgraded to the Cooler Master CM Stacker 830 Chassis , what a great case this happens to be, so much room and it really keeps the components cooled down...

Originally Posted By: Relic In a word: no. Well perhaps this maybe the incorrect response in that what is being asked could be mis-interpreted To understand SLI or Crossfire technologies, you have to understand what they are attempting to do, render more information on the screen by leveraging the power of two or four indentical GPU's and outputting this information as one single display. SLI can support up to four cards while Crossfire currently only supports two graphics cards. This isn't to say it functions like a RAID array but I guess in loose terms you could say that a pair of graphics cards in SLI or Crossfire mode is working like a RAID Zero array

Originally Posted By: bchilly Just use Real Player its way better than WMP. Well that's a subjective point is it not I personally prefer using either WMP or VLC as I also have downloaded the advanced codec pack from Cole2k.net

Originally Posted By: bardoksan How would I be able to tell what the frame buffer size is, or is that the amount of video ram. Frame Buffer is the technical term for the local memory storage located on the graphics card itself

Well you are partly correct, here's what nVidia has done in the past year with their drivers: You no longer have to have the same make/model of card, but you do have to make sure they are the same model GPU and that both have the same frame buffer size. For example, you can have say an Asus 7900GTX 256MB or 512MB paired with a PNY 7900GTX 256MB or 512MB card. No you can't as far as I know mix a card with 256MB with one that has 512MB of memory. Another option you may want to consider is the 7950GX2 cards, these are essentially an SLI model with another graphics card in a daughter-board configuration. And of course there is the latest GPU technology too, the 8800 GT/GTS/GTX models. I'm now contimplating an upgrade as well, not that my current pair of 7800GTX's are bad, just that one of them is having some cooling fan issues and I'm not able to run SLI mode at the moment

I would recommend downloading the latest build of the following anti-malware tools and scanning your system first: 1) Spybot - Search & Destroy 2) AdAware Personal Edition 3) Windows Defender You can get the first two apps from here and Windows Defender from Microsofts website. Also be sure to d/l the latest OS patches and such. Yes, goggle is an actual malware site, they count on users mis-typing google all the time which does indeed happen. Check out this real GOOGLE SEARCH about this site and note all the others commenting on the same thing

You can d/l the latest drivers HERE!

I found this article and this article for TZ support on Microsoft's Knowledge Base. I hear what you are saying but Windows 2000 has passed their mainstream support timeline.

I concur with DosFreak, you are using the onboard graphics display on your motherboard and it just does not have enough features and power to properly run this and many other games in the past couple of years... You should check your motherboard for an AGP slot as most of these motherboards had an AGP 8x slot on them, even the micro ATX boards. There are a lot of really good AGP 8x cards still available and some are based on the current DX9 GPU's like the nVidia 7xxx series and the ATi x13/16/19xx series cards.

First off, I couldn't edit my post so I have to reply with another one instead Picked up THIS chassis yesterday for my pimp-daddy gaming rig. This thing is massive so if you are looking for small, then look someplace else for sure It comes with all the neat features you would want including BTX conversion and the neccessary air-ducts too. The thing that got me was the all around look of the chassis and the well ventilated side panels. Hell it comes with a special fan mount bracket on the main side panel for up to 4 120mm fans They went so far as to create a nice mesh vent slot on the bottom of the chassis as well. Since the motherboard mounting tray is removable you and supports extended ATX form factors this would be a good chassis for just about anything, I think even a Quad-SLI rig would remain very cool in this case

All this talk about large LCD displays and this is what I picked up last night, very sweet for both gaming in 1600 x 1200 and Widescreen DVD viewing

Nice, I have an Apple Compatible, remember the Power Center machines from Power Computing ?!? It's an older Powercenter 150 that I upgraded to a G3 400MHz via the CPU slot

That was going to be my next suggestion, a motherboard BIOS update for you make/model could resolve this. I was also going to suggest a firmware update on the Samsung optical drive as well. Here is the LINK for their latest firmware download.

Check the motherboard CMOS/BIOS settings and verify that the IDE/SATA controller mode is in ENHANCED mode rather then SATA ONLY or AUTO. With Win 2K and above you can control up to 6 drives but only in ENHANCED mode. Since it's also an ATi chipset motherboard, be sure you have their latest chipset/inf drivers for Windows, but don't install these until after you change to ENHANCED mode first

Yeppers, hence the reason I dual-boot or in the case of my gaming rig, quad-boot my boxes so I have a boot menu option for different OS's I'm waiting for the updated drivers for my X-Fi card along with SLI support too

Found it and copied it to my C:\WINNT folder. Thanks for pointing me to the correct location @dosfreak, if you R-Mouse click on the .dll file you can quuckly register or unregister the file without having to type in the regsrv32 filename from the command prompt...

I just looked at the c:\winnt directory and not anyplace else, guess I need to do a search when I get home from work then....

Hmm, I don't seem to have this installed on my Win 2K box. Is it part of the the add-on admin pack for Win 2K ?!?

I've been BETA testing Vista since it's public release and find it interesting, but since there were never proper nVidia SLI drivers I didn't really mess with it too much, nor did the so-called RC1/RC2 drivers from ATi worked on my other machine This is not to say the fault was with Vista, but why attempt to use the OS for game testing if I can't even install the OEM Graphics Card Drivers ?!?

Well, since I do a quad-boot, I suppose I can weigh in on how I did it myself Basically if you have either multiple partitions or HDD's then the process is simple. Start with installing XP Pro (32-bit) and install on the first seen partition/hdd. Then install XP Pro (64-bit) on the second partition/hdd. Then when you get Vista, 32 or 64 bit, install that to the third partition/hdd. No renaming neccessary as each of these OS's is their own install and what's nice is a brand new Boot Menu that will look something like the following: Microsoft Windows XP Pro Microsoft Windows XP Pro You will notice a count down time, default of 30 seconds. Well, just edit the boot.ini file on the first partition/hdd and adjust to your liking, including the name. Below is how I label my os's. Microsoft Windows XP Pro (32-bit) Microsoft Windows XP Pro (64-bit) Now this is what it looks like before you install Vista. After installing Vista the Boot Menu changes to something like the following: Older version of Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows Vista And again a nice countdown timer and if you choose the older version of windows boot option, you will be presented with your older Windows XP Boot Menu once again to select either your 32 or 64 bit version of XP Pro. It may seem confusing at first but the boot manager seems to do most of the work for you on this one