paul_h_amiga

I read about the problems that People have with the Socket A motherboards, and it mainly boiled down to the VIA Chipsets. This concerns me for the future. Which would be the best choice for stablity above all else, or would I be better off going all the way and getting a P4 with matching board (that has to support DDR Ram, I don't wanna pay out for yet more RAM!!) Cheers ya'all

It seems that whenever a new graphics card, sound system or whatever comes out I see a lot of posts on forums (not just this one) saying that they simply have to have them becuase it is a tiny bit faster than what they have now be it a the ATI Washing powder or the Nvidia Geforce. I recently got the Geforce 4 Ti 4600, because of upcoming releases such as Doom III and Unreal II which would be better played on such a card rather than the Geforce 2 GTS which inhabited my system, and which was serving me very well, right up to the very end. I really had to spend some money over the last year or so as the Celeron 500 system I had for 2 years was no longer cutting it. That really is my only reason, and what I have now will siut me for a long time yet it seems. My Question is this: Why is everyone so obsessed with having the very latest kit when there is nothing that will take advantage for a long time to come?

SWEET! May as well buy XP Pro then, and not worry at all!!

Well these posts were a fair response, and too be honest some surprised me, ripping a dvd while playing Wolfenstein? Geez....

I didn't know the license applied to ealier versions of windows NT (well, 2000 and NT) as well. When I asked MS, they said you need a separate license for each OS.

Anyone know of a program that ups the default 60Hz Refresh rate for the 28.30 Drivers for Geforce 2 GTSs, the old Program that I have (Nvidia Refresh Rate Fixer) No longer works. Cheers

Well gang here goes nothing!! I'm using PowerDVD 4, The drive in Question is a Pioneer DVD-106S Drive. The DVD Playback is strange in that it seems to be missing a few frames or frames get blurred together for a second. This is most noticeable on Futrarama or other animation. But it is fine when I view real-life? DVDs such as Monty Python or Three Kings. I have tried setting the UDMA setting's using PowerDVD's System Diagnostic but when I reboot it says it has failed, although in the Device Manager It says it is set to UDMA Mode. This confuses me. I have tried another OS (winXP and it is the same in that. I have tried WinDVD 3 and still the problem persists? Any solutions you can provide would a great peace of mind. Cheers y'all.

yep I checked those settings and they were set to the DMA Mode.

"Did you ever feel like we're just playing fox and the hounds with these machines?" Yep, except if there were never any problems, where would the fun be!! Cheers for those links I will give them a go, I don't see how there could be lack of memory as 512MB should be more than enough! I do have a nagging feeling about The Video overlay, but the geforce 2 gts should be more than enough to play it back shouldn't it?

I have one of the older cases which doesn't have a fan next the CPU/heatsink. The temperature inside is worrying at times, I must admit, which is why I am getting one of those coolercase cases from Overclockers.co.uk, so maybe if it is the heat, then hopefully that will get it sorted. as for the DVDs, It does happen at the same sort of areas. but is seems that any fast mving struff as as credits etc, are blurred.

It is one of those round IDE cables, and they are ATA100. I assume it is a 40 pin cable.

Hey no worries mate, I will remain calm at all times. GOD DAMN IT! The way i have it setup is that, as you have said, the DVD Drive is the Master Drive and the Plextor is the slave. I have no problems with the Plextor drive, far from it gives great performance. I am using the latest 4.38V Via Drivers, and also I have already flashed the BIOS with the latest update from ABIT. (The motherboard which I failed to mention before is the KG7-Lite, and in all honesty I was thinking about the KG7-RAID Version so I could have the DVD and CD-Writer on Separate IDE Connections but of course I need cash way before I do that.) but I want to find a way of not really having to resort to spending more money than I have to first. I have thought about the display set at 32-bit and 16 bit, but still the problem remains. Cheers

Does anyone know about the full specs of the Advent Laptop 5480 DVD and indeed where the manufactorer's web site is? Also I want to know about the SIS 630 Graphics i.e. does it support OpenGL or other 3D?

Yep but it didn't acutally say anything about OpenGL and any shape or form.

Hello it has been a long while since I last posted to this forum. I was wondering if anyone has a list nof which games offer software rendering and/or graphics. You see I am buying a laptop to take with me to a lot of places, and as well as doing work on the thing, I want to take a time out every once in a while. I know laptops are not the best things in the world to play games, but I want to at least try. The ones I know have software graphics on are: Half-life (all versions and varients including Gunman Chroncles) Diablo Diablo II Starcraft Warcraft 2 Descent I and II Who wants to be a millionaire? Dos Games Monkey Island Games (I don't know about the last due to the fact that I think Direct3D can be done via software as well thus opening up other great titles; can someone confirm this?) Does anyone else know of any games that have software graphics on? Cheers

HOW MUCH ARE THEY?

This is a long message so please bear with me! I recently upgraded my sister's PC, At the time it was only using a cyrix 333 processor (which we all know is cack), 4MB on board Graphics, a Voodoo2 card, 64MB of EDO Ram, an second hand 6 GB hard drive. The motherboard was based on a SIS chipset (5597/98), and I also had a Sound Blaster 64AWE ISA Card It all started when I purchased an Nvidia Geforce 2 MX PCI card for the system. Based on my previous goings with the series of cards (I have a Geforce 2 GTS in mine), i decided it would be the best short term solution to the little problem until I could a more perminent solution. Anyway The system was churning through the demos of Quake 3 at around 17fps. But the thing that really got me was the half-life performance. It was really struggling on 640x480 Resoulution DirectX!!! As a result, I went down to the local computer fair and bought a new motherboard (SIS 5595 chipset) and 128 MB of 133Mz SDRAM. I use a K6-2 300 Processor (one I had lying around), and I brought over all the cards, apart from the ISA Sound Blaster, becuase there was no room in the case. Instead i used the on-board sound system. I installed Windows ME, and all the latest drivers. I tried Quake 3, and still it came in around 17fps!!! There is a bottleneck in there somewhere, but I am at a loss where!!! No matter what resoultion I try it is always around 17fps, so I don't think it is the graphics. I am wondering whether of not it is the hard drive, as it does make quite a noise when accessing data, and when watching the demo sequence from Typing of the dead. Anything else you guys can think of because I am almost out of options. ------------------ Bob The Builder http://www.thtproductions.co.uk/

I upgraded the K6-300 to 500, and there was a 5 fps increase in Q3 (22 fps instead of 17) I overclocked the PCI card to 180HZ on both setting things in Powerstrip and the system has got a little bit faster but not much. ------------------ Bob The Builder http://www.thtproductions.co.uk/

What are the best settings to get the most performance out of the geforce 2 MX PCI card,(and before you say it no, not anything saying upgrade to an AGP card cause they're better. I know that, but this PC has no AGP, except on board) ------------------ Bob The Builder http://www.thtproductions.co.uk/

What does VIA have to do with the SIS chipsets? Are they the same company or something? I have to get rid off the Cyrix. It was driving me sister up the wall!!! But unfortunatly I can't tell the difference till I sort this problem out mate.... ------------------ Bob The Builder http://www.thtproductions.co.uk/

Where are these updates? ------------------ Bob The Builder http://www.thtproductions.co.uk/

I have the following three games with which I want to use on a W2K system. The games are House of the Dead, Sonic r and Virtua Cop 2. The system I have: Celeron 500 Geforce 2 GTS 192MB Ram Direct X 8 10GB HD Creative DVD 5x drive Philips 8X4X32 Cd-Rewriter I have tried the Application Compatiblity Thing from the W2K CD but it doesn't work. Any ideas? I seriously do NOT want to go back to Win98.

misunderstood. Sorry. ------------------ Bob The Builder http://www.thtproductions.co.uk/

Tha games are not dos games they are for Windows 95. So there's one blow out anyway, Now here's one workaround for those in trtouble!! I installed house of the dead on Win 98, then found all references to it from the regestry (only one little bit). Copied the directory and all shortcuts over to a separate HD I have in the system, applied the reg settings in W2K, and installed all the program files to the priganl directory speicifed in the reg file. Copied the shortcuts over to the start menu, and Tried it. Well f**k me if it only worked!!! I was playing the damn thing for 2 hours and not a problem!! If I still try to insatll the game It comes up the error Support for Nt not avalible at this time, but I can play it!! I haven't tried it for the other two games yet but fingers crossed I might get them working the same way. I applied the compatiblity patch from old Microsoft, and it still didn't work. I am wondering why it didn't? But what matters is that is the game is working under W2K. Also Monkey Island 3 works thanks to the Febuary update that Microsoft put on their website, so you don't need to copy all 2 CDS over to the HD any more!!! ------------------ Bob The Builder http://www.thtproductions.co.uk/

You can just put them on a cd as you would normally put files on. I know you are thinking about having it automatically installed, but I think this would be the only way of doing it. ------------------ Bob The Builder http://www.thtproductions.co.uk/