Brian Frank

The bandwith on PCIe will be way more than needed...kinda like AGP 8x (heck, even 4x is plenty even today). I guess the main benefit is more power available to the card, and the option for more than one PCIe 16x slot (unlike AGP, except for the unreleased Micron Samurai chipset for the PIII's )

Basically, I've got some crap lying around that works, and I'd like to trade it for something I can use. My info: e-mail: bjgrifter@verizon.net heat: BigB What I'm looking for: -Soltek SL-75FRN/75FRN2 -Soltek SL-NV400 (prefer -L) -DFI Infinity/Lan Party A or B -Epox 8RDA3/+/I If you have one of those, I'm intrested, particularly either Soltek. What's For Trade (and, atm, trade only): -Epox MVP3G2 -K6-2 w/o heatspreader (removed before I had it) -32MB PC100 -Vantec 6027D -Adaptec 2906 SCSI controller w Rounded cable -Plextor UltraPlex 40X CD-ROM (ghetto mod marker "painting") -Abit KG7-RAID (BIOS DM) Everything works. I have the manuals for both motherboards. Otherwise they come bare. I do have the box for the KG7, but nothing else. The previous owner of the KG7 seeme to had used it in some watercooling or refridgeration setup and has some sort of jelly on the back of the socket. I wasn't really sure how to clean it off and left it their. I haven't seen it adversely affect the board however.

Actually, as long as the PSU is plugged in, there's a very tiny amount of electricity flowing, but it's not enough to power your USB stuff.

MSI is usually solid, but the K7N2 Delta's are pretty bad. I had 2 of them that threw fits with every stick of RAM I had---which worked great in the other systems I had.

I'm not sure I'd trust OCZ. From their past, I'd be really cautious about buying them. Anything of the Epox brand in the past couple of years I personally wouldn't touch. I haven't tried it, but Geil DDR seems to be pretty good and pretty cheap. I've also been reading rave reviews over PMI's DDR. For the motherboard, I'm running the Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe myself and I'm very pleased with it. Other popular choices are Abit's NF7-S ver. 2.0 and the DFI LanParty/Infinity boards. For heatsinks, you might wanna look into ThermalRight stuff like the SLK-800/900 series. I'm not saying the other coolers you linked are bad, but I'm not sure how well they'll perform.

Originally posted by shassouneh: Quote: HI All, Can anyone help me with this. I found a decent deal on a 9600 SE. Here is the link Radeon 9600 SE 128 MB Is this card any good? Thanx For the price, no. The memory bus is cut from 128 bits to 64-bits. If it were, say $30, it'd be alright, but for the price it runs, it's not worth the money paid. It's on the same recommendation as the GeForce FX 5200. Sappire is a good brand tho.

The GeForce FX5600 or 5700. For ATi's side of things, the Radeon 9200 would be a steup up in the right direction.

Lower temps are always better...however, as long as it's stable, your temps are fine.

Try a new motherboard, perhaps?

My main box updated: Asus A7N8X-E Dlx AthlonXP 2000+ 512MB PC2700 (2x256)--Samsung Sapphire Radeon 9600XT Western Digital 60GB Maxtor 20GB + 40GB Seagate 9.1 Ultra 2 SCSI 10k RPM CMD ATA100 PCI Tekram DC-390U2W Thermalright SK-7 Sparkle 350W PSU

That card should work fine. The card is backwards compatible with AGP 4x slots, and the KT133 conforms to that spec.

The part about the Athlon heat issues aren't an issue if you use a decent heatsink and have good airflow in your case---no different than if you were to build a P4 box. Having said that, for the Intel side, Abit's IS7 series boards are nice and cheap. If you want to splurge go for Abit's IC7 or Asus P4C800 series boards. I've also been hearing great things about DFI's LANParty and Infinity lines, but haven't ever worked extensively with DFI before. AMD: nForce 2 all the way. I picked up Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe recently and it's an excellent board. Either way is good, and the issues AMD has had in the past are sorted out by now. For Intel...keep with an Intel chipset and stay the hell away from Prescott for now.

No. Apple's latest monitor connection looks pretty close to DVI, but it won't work. I believe there are converters available, but I'm not 100% positive.

For Athlons, the dual-channel memory doesn't amount to a huge performance increase, only like 3-5%. The FX cards aren't bad, but the main thing against them is the craptacular implementation of DX9. Plus, with a 9700 Pro, you're a fool to go to anything else since it won't render a performance boost to make up for the cost. A few years ago, I'd agree with you on the Radeon series sucking, but the main issue with them---namely the drivers---have long since been dealt with. Also, nVidia seems to like to tweak their drivers to make their 3Dmark score give higher results (to be fair, ATi pulled a similar stunt awhile back).

I'd keep the 9700Pro. You won't gain anything by going to the 9800s.

Unless you want to overclock a Prescott (and go with a 2.4A then), Stick with the Northwood cores for the P4. On the AMD side of things, I recently got Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe and it's a great, solid board. For Intel, I'm using the Abit IS7-E, but I was also looking at the Asus P4P800 as well. Asus, Abit, and Epox have i865PE boards with a PAT-like hack that gives them the performance of their pricier i875P brothers. I believe that MSI and Gigabyte may have a similar feature as well, but I'm not positive. The 64-bit Athlons are pretty fast in 32-bit, but unless you really have a lot of cash burning a hole in your pocket, you can get some nice Athlon or 2.x P4's for a good price. Of course, if you want the fastest money can buy...

Try it in a different slot, I dunno. It's that or the stick is going bad.

Sounds like it's been disabled. START-->Run. Type "gpedit.msc" (no quotes). Expand User Configuration (if not already done), expand Administrative Template. Click on the System folder. One of the options that appears is "Disable Autoplay". Double click on it. By default, it's set to "Not Configured", but you can also enable or disable it.

They might, but I'm not sure.

I remember hearing about alot of legacy support being dropped in XP...that might be why you're not able to get the thing working. You *might* be able to use an NT 4.0 or Win2k driver, but beyond that, you may just be better off getting a new sound card. Philips and Hercules both have ones around $30.

Get an AT PSU. I know exactly what your talking about, and I'm not sure if that would work (at least without changing the wires around possibly). You've got an AT board, so it's easier to get an AT PSU than hack up an ATX PSU to make it work on an AT board. Look around, as you might be able to find an ATX->AT power lead converter, but off the top of my head, I know I've just seen 'em around town only.

I'm going to step in and say how I'm eating those words about the nForce 2. While you've always got the chance of getting a bum board, the memory issues have been dealt with as I'm running Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe with no problems.

The Radeon will be much better.

Sapphire Radeon 9600XT and an Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe.

This is odd: for some reason, my personal account has been denied access to Windows update. My personal account is part of Administrators and Power Users. I have Win2k SP2 installed. How do I set it so I don't have to go into the Admin account to update Windows? Thanx