Brian Frank

I use the drivers I do because they've been not only the fastest, but also haven't given me trouble, even with new games like Jedi Knight II and Serious Sam 2. I probably will continue to use these drivers until I have a problem and need to update them. I stuck with the 10.80's for the longest time because not only were they faster than any other driver I used, but I wasn't having any problems with them either. I haven't used the WHQL drivers, but then again, I tend not to run into problems (my good luck I guess)

I have personally had good luck with the 21.81's.

Sometimes, if it's a good one, it'd probably work. However, with your system specs, it's probably not gonna fly.

Nah, leave this thing open. I tried overclocking on the NV7-133R. It's definitely not much of an overclocker, and the little I could OC just wasn't worth it to do so.

XP works great, but Win2k does a fine job also, so I see no reason to criticize that. XP=Win2k for home users.

For RAID 0, I know that's true, but I don't believe that fits the bill for all levels of RAID. Pretty much what BladeRunner said about the mirroring: shouldn't loose the data, but a backup can't hurt ya any.

I like posting my stuff, regardless of what people already had. My blood, sweat, and tears (okay, no crying was involved---lots of swearing at points tho) were involved in putting each machine together. I know darn well I'm not gonna have the highest 3D Mark score, but they are good refrences and fun to compare. But, in the end, it doesn't even matter... I've had 2 different motherboards run through here recently for my main rig, and playing games, I can't tell a damn difference. 3D Mark scores, yeah, a 500 point diff is big, but even watching it, there's not a whole big difference, as the system is still PDQ.

I'm just starting this one to discuss motherboard's and motherboard companies. Companies that I think are good: Asus, Tyan, SuperMicro, AOpen. Companies that are coming along: Abit, Epox Companies that suck: FIC.

There's no guarantee you'll hit 1.5GHz stable, but it'll be fun to try. Just make sure you have good cooling.

I've been very happy with the 21.81's, tho I'd recommend d/ling them from the company that made your card.

I've come to believe that a board is not good if it cannot work fine at stock speeds and settings. If it fails here, what good is it to overclock? I'm all for overclocking, but only if it can work in a non-OC'd environment. DFI is nothing fancy, but their boards seem to be nice from what I've read and the test systems at college they have for us to play with.

I've never heard of a parallel port keyboard before...

It's the chipset that's more of an issue here. Just as with about anywhere, there are those people that don't like Via. I don't give a rip what he buys. He gets a P4--fine. He goes AMD--fine. The best policy here, IMO, is "Whatever works for you"

ThC: The Nforce is not out of AGP spec. The NV7-133R has a capacitor that is in violation of the spec (in the way). The P4 Rambus combo is the best to date for the P4, and as much as DDR costs right now, it's a better bet to go with RDRAM.

I'm not sure how it translates into US dollars, but if each dollar in your currency is considerably less than a US dollar, probably pretty good. If that's equal or close to $420 USD, then that's too pricey for that stuff used.

That's pretty much the standard price on-line. Great board, I might add.

As much as I like Asus, I'm really diggin the Abit NV7-133R. It's probably a tad slower than the Asus, but, if you're one of the folks less inclined to buy a Via board, this uses the NForce 415 (the 420 w/o the integrated video). It's got USB 2.0, HighPoint ATA133 RAID (controller can natively function as an extra IDE controller), LAN, 4 USB 1.1 ports, 5 PCI, 1 AGP with a retention clip, and has 5.1 channel Dolby-Digital on-board sound. The KT333 boards seem to be having some problems right now, being a new product. I'd probably hold off on a KT333 board until the boards have matured. The only things to watch out for are the AGP slot being out of spec and the board is not overclocking friendly (which you probably don't really care about anyway).

I do notice XP to be a tad faster in gaming than under 2k. However, if I was in a business setting, Win2k all the way still.

Whaddaya looking for?

If it's a RAID specific card, not a add in ATA controller (non-RAID), that may pose a problem. It may work, it may not. HighPoint controllers are hdd specific, as well as Promise RAID cards (especially ones on motherboards).

I agree: cheaters suck.

Dirty Harry pretty much said it all. Unless you got a mobo with the same chipset, you need to reinstall Windows. And while you can get around it, you just end up having to reinstall Windows later anyway. That's one good thing about keeping your OS on a different partition: just format that one when necessary and reinstall Windows. While you still need to reinstall all your apps, the data (saved games, mp3s, nudie pix, secret deathstar plans, etc. ) are still there.

Haven't checked yet. I've got some more important things currently going, and I haven't gotten around to downloading IBM's drive diagnostic tool to analyze both deathstars.

You can use the IDE controllers (4) on the mobo, plus the ones on the addon card (at least another 4). Just keep in mind that you can only use these cards for hard drives, nothing else.

500? Bah. I am the #1 spammer poster here, with my 2518 posts (including this one).:p:p