Brian Frank

Yeah. I looked over that forum some more. Why the hell does everybody have to have some huge pic on the sig line? I have DSL and it takes a two response post longer to download than nearly any written post here. I don't mind avatars, but having a picure bigger than your message is really irritating.

If you don't add any cards, you just have to install 1 driver. Plus, the integrated graphics would be like having a GF2MX--but not separate. Plus, the audio is supposedly even better than Creative's SBLive!, and it uses DDR. You can upgrade your video and sound card too though. There will be AGP and PCI slots on the boards. It would be kinda nice to see integrated graphics that don't suck. Plus, if you're trying to save some cash, you can get an nForce 420 chipset mobo, DDR, and a CPU and you're set. It may not be the best, but you would still be able to play games at respectable resolutions with respectable speed. System vendor's are gonna love the nForce because they only need to add ram and the cpu and they've got their system set up. Plus, if you're really strapped for cash and building a system for someone, this could be the ticket.

Any time you go to a new OS, it's really best to do a clean install in the long run. You will avoid a lot of problems by doing so.

What BIOS version for the A7V? If you don't already have it, flash your BIOS to 1007. I've had the reg patch installed without any problems. Also, if you haven't already, having Service Pack 2 will help a lot. And the latest Via 4-in-1 drivers. That reg patch should fix you up though. But it is just for gaming. Any more problems, post 'em here, and list all your specs too--or one related to it.

I can see why it's a "Secret".

There were a ton of people bashing on ClubOC for a screw up, and then apparently they went to bash Anandtech, Tom's Hardware, and [H]ardOCP. I don't consider myself an old man just being a college student, but the forums over there don't seem to be moderated at all. While ClubOC did deserve a thumping, other than flaming them, some people attacked ClubOC by other means. I don't like everything everyone says, but doing DoS attacks is not a mature way to handle your disapproval. Of course, maturity doesn't seem to be critical anymore...sad. It's nasty when there's flames over at Mad Onion---which is why I didn't get involved there. I don't need hate mail or other "fun" things sent to me. True about women being attractive nonetheless, and I like anime, but putting risque pix on your sig line gives a bad impression--real bad. I like hot women, but I also consider that there are some people that do get offended, and you should respect that in a reasonable manner. And not putting up risque stuff will add to your credibility. I'm sure that if someone like clutch--no offense intended--were to add a pic of a Victoria Secret model, I probably wouldn't have the same level of respect I do for him now. Of course, it all depends on who is moderating too. At this board, the reins are a lot tighter than anywhere else, and not too much BS slides around. If you want to screw around a bit, that's alright, but don't try to stray too far off. You're absolutely right, BladeRunner: erotica has nothing to do with hardware. Things need to be kept to an appropriate level, and sig lines need to be included. No offense to those who aren't participating in such activities or Mad Onion.

Hehe. Now I'm glad with my Fortissimo sound card. I can install the drivers on it without a problem---no Via southbridge problems, lock ups, slowdowns and the like. Creative better come out with them for XP, otherwise they could piss off a lot more people than they already have now.

I'd kinda like to educate myself on SCSI, but I haven't found anything that explains the different flavors in exhasutive detail. Anybody know of something real detailed in all the hardware involved and stuff.

Yeah.

Well, AMD has an SMP setup now, but they still have Intel to deal with, on Intel's turf.

That's the only movie I really want to see.

The Duron's are eventually supposed to be SMP capable, but not right now. And Cynan's right, the current Celeron's aren't SMP enabled. As I recall, SMP Celeron's only go up to 466MHz without overclocking. If you want a dual board now, it's either got to be the Celeron I or Pentium III, and I personally don't see a duallie AMD system being viable at this point in time. I got me an MSI 694D Pro-AR version 1.0 and it's a good board. Tyan also makes some good boards, but they are not for overclocking at all. You can overclock 'em, but they suck for doing so, just keep that in mind, but they are good boards. Personally, any component that costs more than a cheap store-bought pc is way outta my price range. As far as I know, AMD does not make consumer motherboards, and any that they do make would just be a reference design. The duallie AMD reference design is the Tyan Thunder K7, but it's the only one out and costs around $600--depending on where you get it and which features come with it. MSI supposed to come out with one real soon, but there's some incompatibility with the AMD 762 northbridge and the Via 686B southbridge which they were planning to use. Abit and Asus should have there duallie boards out by the end of the year... I'm hoping for duallie Durons, but I'm not gonna hold my breath. irrelevant side note: looks like I got the second most number of posts here on the board, with Eddie being 100+ posts ahead o me. We now return you to your regularly schedualed musings.

Which drivers are you using? So far the best for me have been the 10.80's, but you may have to play around with several different versions.

Keep away from Chaintech and Gigabyte. Epox is pretty good from what I've heard, and Abit and Asus are definitely ones to keep in mind. Personally, I'd also consider MSI in my search as they put out pretty good boards if you see them around. Oh, yeah, slot CPU's seem to be dead in the water in both parties. I would say go with either Asus or Abit and a T-Bird or Palimino. Asus has a board or two with both DDR and SDR support, the A7M266 I think. Abit has a DDR with an AMD chipset the KG7-RAID, and I'd look into that too. If you want to overclock, Asus or Abit hands down. Personally, I'd say to wait until things smooth out since it's a wave of new cpu's, chipsets, and RAM at the same time. Nothing's wrong with AMD or Intel, but I'd would be nice if Intel wouldn't change the CPU formfactor everytime they release a new generation of CPU's.

Personally, I've not been too impressed with XP. Sure, MS integrates stuff to make it easier for the average joe without previous experience, but I've just found it more frustrating to find stuff. Why the hell does MS have to change stuff around every ****in time they release another OS! Reasons I'm not going to XP: Product Activation--may not be that bad, but I'd like to see how it turns out; limited mp3 ripping; Win2k runs just fine for me--and I don't need the eye candy; XP's firewall--MS must be joking here!--being the most popular OS, it's security will be compromised. Another reason I'm hesitant is because the last OS MS really crowed about being all that was ME, and I speak for a number of people when I say it sucked hard. I'm sorry, but I don't feel like having to buy two copies of the same software to run on my computers. **** XP; I'm staying with 2000 until MS stops trying to **** every user on the planet.

Most Duron 800's can hit 1GHz without a problem, but not much more. I did a little different approach to my D800. Multiplier at 9.5 x 107MHz front side bus=1016MHz, and since my ram is PC133, I set it to run at 133MHz instead of 100. I'd love to increase the FSB higher, but using both the multiplier and the FSB together limits the potential of both. This is the highest I can get regardless of what I do. Anything else is unstable, even with the max voltage, and I'm not in the mood to modify the board to pump out more juice. My vcore is 1.75 volts. I can bump it up more, but that doesn't help any after that. Also, yeah, the ram timings can cap your OC pretty quick. I had to drop mine back to 3, and since I was able to get more performance by doing so with the overclock it was worth it. I've been running it like this for the past several months and had it on almost constantly without lockups. In my experience, ME has been a pain in the *** to use, and Win2k ran better and ran all but my dos games. For me the best nVidia drivers have been the 10.80's with my GF2 MX. I played around with a few other versions, but these worked the best for me. I'm not totally certain, but the SBLive!/Via 686B southbridge combo could be a cause. Some people have had issues with it and some have not.

In device manager, what type of PC is his listed as? If the ACPI got changed with it somehow, that could be affecting it.

Heh. I've traded in about $110 worth of hardware in exchange for the cpu, otherwise I'd get it from that site. But, hey, thanx for the tip anyway. One of the guys at the store used to be a classmate back in elementry, and tries to cut me deals sometimes, plus they were the only ones in town that you can trade in hardware toward new stuff.

I'm still waiting for the 2nd damn cpu to come in! The store I'm getting from finally got it in, but the stupid morons where they shipped it from totally screwed up the entire shipment of parts they sent, and my cpu was a slot 1. Obviously, a s370 duallie board will not be using that one, so it got sent back. That company hasn't done too good of a job at keeping us informed, so the store ordered another cpu from a different company. If I'd know the bullsh!t I'd be going through, I might have just bought two new cpu's, but I thought that companies would let their employees know the difference between a socket cpu and a slot. --end rant--

Well, you need to make sure that the network card is set as the right one.

He didn't inhale enough, DUH!!!

I was wondering about an NT Compatible users webring? Not saying it'll come true, but it'd be interesting to discuss.

Hmm, seeing as I never really got into DOS, that part might actually be nice for me. And the books being useful would be nice, considering what I'll probably spend on them... So far, from what I've gathered, its just something that looks good but doesn't have any real value. MSCE will look good and will be useful, but right now that's a tad expensive for me, since I'm just in college and can't afford to move out yet. Basically, I'm just interested in what will get me started right now, and work on the heavy duty stuff when I have the funds to do it. I just want to play around with computers all day and get paid for it.

Yeah, hopefully AMD will continue to work on the heat issue with their chips, especially for 1U rackmount servers.

$25 for XP Lite? I'm not totally clear on what it was supposed to be: an OS or a fancy Tweak UI. If it's the latter, there's already stuff like X-Setup, and I'm sure there are more of like out there. As for an OS...wouldn't it just be better if MS would let you choose what you wanted install, particularly MovieMaker, Accessability and the like. And some people won't need any program to change what they want, I do just because I don't like hunting in the registry and sheer laziness.