mjwebb007

If the Opteron model number starts with a 1 and is higher than or equal to 165 then it is a dual-core (like the X2 series processors) and 939 pin. One good thing about Opterons is that their cores (at least the ones I noted above) are all 1MB cores (vice the 3800, 4200 and 4600's 512k cores). The 165 in particular is only slightly more expensive than the 3800 (it has a slower clock speed but larger cache and overlocks better than the 3800). If you are willing to spend in the 500 range then you can get a 175 which comes stock at 2.2Ghz but overclocks well too. It is basically a 1MB per core 4400 X2 with a more overclocking friendly silicon substrate. The Opterons are really server chips but they (at least the 939 pin ones) will work pretty much with any 939 pin mobo with the latest bios revisions. Plus the 939 versions don't require the more expensive ECC memory that the 940 pin ones need so if you already have DDR memory you won't have to buy new sticks (although if you want to overclock I would recommend stepping up to at least a DDR500 rating-personal recommendations are OCZ, Mushkin or Corsair). For informational purposes the Opterons that have something other than 1 as the initial numbers are 940 pin strictly server chips (though you could probably use them with the initial nForce chips (nForce 3 Pro 150 and such)) to be used on 940 server boards (and there may be 940 pin 1-series but go to amd.com to look that up). The 2 series are pretty much for boards that can handle 2 processors (for 4 cores total), and the 8 series are 4-way processors (sort of like quad core but not really discrete cores). Hope this helps.

Without knowing specs up front I would recommend the Athlon X2 3800+ for cost...if you can splurge a little get one of the dual core Opterons (939 pin). They work fine with 939 mobos and are better overclockers...the Opterons are a little better silicon than the X2 series...I personally have a X2 3800+ in my HTPC, an X2 4800+ in my media server and an Opteron 175 in my gaming rig...

As far as I understood you couldn't see anything, not even the BIOS. If you can get into the BIOS and enable on-board graphics and it works then it would have to be a driver issue (assuming it goes dark once you get into Windows). If you can get into Windows in safe mode but it locks up in normal mode, then you would pretty much have to do a clean install of Windows. The problem with just transferring hardware (specifically a hard drive to another computer) without doing a clean install, is that your hard drive that pretty much stores all your hardware info is set to remember the OLD stuff. You can't switch motherboards and keep an unformatted, old installation without problems. About the only time you could do this would either be a direct switch with the same motherboard or you could probably get away with switching to a different manufacturer with the same chipset (and probably only if they are both based on the same reference design). Another idea would be to install an empty formatted hard drive and then use the old hard drive as a slave drive (and possibly use the WinXP Files and Settings Transfer Wizard).

$39 after rebate...and 256MB of memory... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130197

Yeah. Very few people on here have the time to check these forums often. I fortunately work nights and have free time while I am at work and reading these passes the time. Relic is a constant source and does a lot with what little time he has. And all he did was do a search you very easily could have done yourself. More than just "Thanks" is in order.

And as far as the monitor question, it isn't a driver issue. Just wanted to know age, I had a monitor that was blinking out on me and it wasn't all that old. Have anything you can swap out with it? Plus I would go Relic's path and do the memory swap. Some motherboards are extremely finicky with memory no matter what the website/manual says (MSI comes to mind).

How old is the monitor you are using?

So are you saying that not even the BIOS screen comes up? If that is the case and you have tried different slots and even the onboard video than it is (in my opinion) either a PSU problem (I had a similar problem because I had not seated my ATX connector quite all the way and also another time I had not completely plugged the power cord into the back of the PSU), your memory (not very likely as your assumption is right in that it would work just at a slower speed, unless of course the memory was incompatible) or the motherboard is DOA. Do you have the ability to swap out PSU's?

Or the 7800GS...they run near $300.

Assuming you mean the VNF3-250 then no...they would not be..they are PCI-E cards and that is an AGP board. If you want a new technology card that works with AGP look to the 7300GS.

Deepak, you need to use the Everest program listed earlier in the post... PCI Multimedia Device is a strictly generic name that Windows (of any kind) gives to something that it can identify as a "Multimedia" device (which all soundcards are). But it is GENERIC...any card installed in your computer would show up as this before you install drivers... We need to know what card it is before we can direct you to drivers...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130262

Actually there are two boards (on newegg.com) that support both AGP and PCI-e. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813135212 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813157081 Both are socket 939. I don't necessarily recommend either though since to maintain this kind of architecture there have got to be some performance hits. You obviously would have to go with Athlon 64 processors on these as well (which I do recommend). They would allow you to go with AGP now and upgrade to PCI-e later. Your choice of video card is a good one. I had that same card and it worked great for me. Both of these boards would be fine for your purposes though. The AsRock board has gotten some fairly good reviews online too. No speed busters but stable performance with good features and future-proofing.

Going out on a limb here but based on his user name I would assume the video card is a GeForce MX4000. Now this limits us to either AGP 8x/4x, AGP 4x/2x or PCI. As far as some simple suggestions gef4000, I have had good experience with Antec cases, both because they are well made and usually they come with fairly good power supplies (especially ones that can easily handle a video card of your caliber). As far as motherboards, I have had good experience with Asus, Gigabyte and MSI (Gigabyte and MSI tend to be more finicky as far as components used but they come with a lot of great features). Memory, I have used Corsair, Crucial, OCZ and GeIL. I prefer Corsair for stability and compatability but the other three are fine too (and you may have an asthetic preference). Also which motherboard you get will determine what kind of memory (speed and format i.e. DDR vs. DDR2) you get. I am also an AMD fan (have used them from my second computer ever built to present ones). It used to be that the offered good performance for less money. Now they offer the best performance (I don't care about Conroes yet, they are not out) for the best price. But if you are sticking with AGP video you will be rather limited on choices of motherboards and CPU's. Plus we really need to know what this rig is going to be used for.

Hi All, First I was having issues with my computer locking up during screensaver activation. I have MCE2005 and I use the Aquarium screen saver. I disabled the screensaver and now it doesn't lock up. BUT whenever I go to play a game, it will make it through the loadup screens then gets into the first part of the game, then three or four seconds into it..BAM...it locks up. My hardware lineup is as follows: Athlon64 X2 3800+ Asus A8N-SLI Premium 2GB Corsair XMS Pro PC3200 Memory ATI AIW X1800XL Video Card SB X-Fi Xtreme Music Sound Card WD Caviar SE16 250GB HD (2) WD Caviar SE16 400GB HD in Striped Array Plextor 716SA DVD-RW Drive Antec NeoPower 480 Powercolor Theater 550 Tuner Card The lock ups occuring once some sort of relatively intense graphic activity occured leads me to believe it is temp related but I am running a watercooled setup and my temps are fine (under load CPU runs around 42C and GPU runs around 55C). I know these sound kind of high for watercooled but I am running a single 80mm radiator and fan. I know this particular card is sort of a power hog so I was thinking two things. Either it is the power supply (although great, maybe not the best for this setup), or I need to plug a molex into the EZ-Plug on my motherboard. The manual states this is pretty much for SLI setups but maybe this card is too much for no EZ-plug assitance even only on one slot. The two games I am trying to run this on are Star Wars: Empire at War and Battle for Middle Earth 2. I don't think that matters since it was locking up on the screensaver before it was disabled but may have something to do with it. Let me know any opinions or steps I should take.

Seriously? No responses or advice?

Or could it just be that the specifically SLI motherboard doesn't like a non-SLI non-nVidia video card?

Wouldn't that be 180? Anyway, I was more referring to Nintendo's technology vice their fan base. And you are right, if you want to play one of the 86 versions of Pokemon, then any Nintendo system will work great and there are people who buy the Nintendo systems for specific games. I (and this is only an opinion) think the only problem that will come up with the PS3 is price (although as we saw with the 360, people will pay anything). Sony certainly has done things right in the past (as they pretty much singlehandedly erased the Sega Dreamcast off the planet). This is coming from someone who bought the Playstation One (when it was called just "Playstation") along with a Sega Saturn and a 3DO system because I wanted to play certain games on each individual system. If I had my choice this holiday season (as that will be when the PS3 is available according to the media), I would get a 360 and a PS3 because again like I posted before I like technology and not necessarily one over the other (I like ATI video cards but I prefer nVidia SLI tech over Crossfire). The only reason I don't is because I am no longer a single man (though my wife waited in line 6 hours on opening night for my original Xbox while I was out at sea and was the person who got me the Dreamcast for my birthday several years back). Both systems are powerful and I think Sony's possible inclusion of Blu-Ray tech and better outputs (1080p I think) will make it the more "techie" system but Microsoft's ability to give you a Plug and Play Media Center box fills that niche better.

I've always felt this is sort of apples and oranges. Consoles are pretty much the true definition of Plug and Play. Limited or no upgradeability (though MS has tried to change this with the plethora of add-ons for the 360, but still no vid or proc upgrades short of hardware hackers) but turn it on, and BAM, ready to play. Long load times sometimes...yes...but not due to a hardware issue normally. On the con side, 6 months from now...you are still stuck with the same hardware. 12 months...yep..same hardware. PC's as we know have upgrades today for the upgrades you just did last week, extremely dynamic. Fanboys exist for any console or video card or processor or memory. So in that respect the apples and oranges point holds little water. I personally have an Xbox and want a 360 but I have no qualms with PSOne/PS2/PS3. I think Nintendo although pretty much the forefather of consoles is now trying to play catch-up with no end in sight. As far as PCs I prefer SLI to Crossfire purely for maturity of the system, but I like ATI video cards <shrug>. I have been piecemealing a system together over the last couple of months and have two pretty good video cards for it (Asus 7800GTX TOP 256MB cards), but we are already talking about 7900GTX's coming out (and those cards are only three months old). One good thing about consoles it there is a pretty long technology upgrade cycle. Just my two cents.

Certainly not an expert here but the hundreds of times I have formatted my hard drive and gotten these blue screens it has come down to a single piece of hardware that was faulty. The fact that it is rebooting during gameplay or watching videos leads me to think it could be one of two things..power supply or video card. It could be memory or CPU too but the IRQ messages leads me to believe it is a "peripheral" (most likely video card). What card are you using? Was it new when you bought it? What order do you install Windows again? Typically you should do the install, once stable, load chipset drivers, load cpu drivers (pretty much just applies to AMD I think-don't know a thing about Intel processors, never used one), load device drivers then load software. Also, do you have the ability to switch out video card or PSU just for the sake of troubleshooting? I know that is a pain but it will really save some hair-pullng down the road. It also could just be that the PSU even if in great condition could be too weak for your setup. Anyway, give some of the details asked for in my questions above and more people may be able to help out.

There is also a sister site www.linuxcompatible.org that might be able to better answer these questions...

First, I built a computer for my brother a while ago and recently it overheated (they don't keep the area around it very clear of dust and cut off some of the ventilation flow to the case, and it is a desktop case so airflow is at a premium from the beginning). Anyway, after the overheating it won't boot back up into Windows. It gets to the progress bar but then after about a minute it starts all over again (restarting, BIOS post, Windows screen). I can get to the Safe Mode menu (actually usually on reboot it comes up on its own) and select Safe Mode. In safe mode, it starts listing all the files then stops and nothing happens. It stops on the same file everytime (I don't have the name in front of me but I can get it). I removed then reinstalled the motherboard BIOS battery, cleared the CMOS, reset my BIOS settings. It just stops or reboots over and over. Could the one overheat have corrupted Windows or is some component damaged? I have changed out the video cards but all other components are the same. Should I find that particular file on the WinXP disc and copy over the old one and see if that works? Part 2: I want to build a Media Server that pretty much once setup and running will get very little actual direct interaction (will pretty much transfer files to and from another networked computer). I want to be able to stream files from this server and wondered about the OS. I already have a copy of WinXP x64. I realize at this point that there may be some driver/software constraints with this OS so I have decided to go with a 32-bit version of WinXP. My question is since it will be a media server vice a file server per se, should I use MCE2005 or WinXP Pro? Either one would be a new purchase so it really is question of capabilities. Please post some opinions.

Fortunately I do also have another Socket754 Processor to swap in. I have not done the file copy yet because I didn't want to waste my time if that was a silly venture. I will try that and see if it works. I am also using 1.5GB of memory in that computer (using three 512MB of GeIL memory) so I may strip it down to one and then swap them out. Also an easy fix since I have additional memory too. If none of the hardware switches work then I will try the stress testing (I would appreciate a nudge in the right direction on a DOS CPU stress tester though when you find it as I am trying to build a diagnostic library for future issues).

Alright people... I am having a problem reading or even seeing CDs and DVDs.. First some specs... AMD X2 3800+ MSI Neo4 Platinum (latest BIOS) ATI AIW X1800XL 2GB Corsair XMS Pro PC3200 MCE2005 (with all updates) (1) 400GB Hitachi Deskstar (4) 400GB WD Caviar SE16 Drives in two RAID 0 Arrays Plextor Premium CD-RW Plextor PX-716A DVD-RW Soundblaster Audigy4 Pro Powercolor Theater500 TV Tuner Now the problems and what I have done so far... First, under properties->recording for each optical drive, I can only select one to "Enable CD Recording for this drive". If I select it on one, the other de-selects. Is this a function of MCE or do I have another issue? (Don't know what to do to fix this one so I have done nothing) Second, when I select one drive, it allows me to open it in another window, but there is nothing there..just an empty window...this happens whether there is a disc inserted or not...and it switches with the selection of CD Recorder as listed above. The other one will say "Please insert a disc into (whichever drive I clicked on)". (Again no idea where to start) Third, with certain CDs or DVDs inserted (not all but more than a few, namely my copy of PlexTools (on DVD) and the copy of Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 that came with my AIW card), nothing happens....the mouse icon shows a disc is being read...then nothing...no autorun...nothing...the disc is spinning...and the light on the CD or DVD drive is flashing...but nothing happens...and when I click on either under My Computer...my second problem happens except it says the disc can't be read due to an I/O error... I know this is a long post but I feel they are all related... OH...and I originally had none of the ASPI files loaded...I used ForceASPI to install version 4.60 but this didn't fix anything other than listing all 4 files when I run ASPICheck...

129MB? Assuming you meant 128MB of RAM, that would be the cause of the slowdown with WinXP.