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I managed to get 11015 3dmark06 score with my 6000+ and 9600 GT which is GOOD.

A stock 9600 Gt is 650 / 1800 / 1650. I had mine at 750 / 2190 / 1825.

My cpu is stock at 3.1 GHz and I took it all the way to 3.45 GHz. Seems like little but AMD's are hard to overclock. When I was at 3.5 GHz I got a BSOD that was 0x44. I googled it but couldn't find anything about it related to CPU's and OC.

My temps were extreamly cool. I can probably even go up to 4 GHz if it's stable.

So, I have DP35DP Media Series motherboard. It apparently doesn't allow me to overclock from the bios, but I'd still enjoy doing so in the future, considering I'll be getting an E8500, which supposedly is an OC God. What software would I use, if any? Is it too risky to use them or would the risk be worth it?

Another question I have is: Should I get 2x2GB RAM, or 3x1GB RAM? I hear that 32 bit systems only work up to 3GBs, so the added cost doesn't seem worth it. Are there any other benefits of having lots of 1GB of RAM rather than two 2GBs, or vice versa?

At 12/11/08 01:04 PM, Jezuz wrote: So, I have DP35DP Media Series motherboard. It apparently doesn't allow me to overclock from the bios, but I'd still enjoy doing so in the future, considering I'll be getting an E8500, which supposedly is an OC God. What software would I use, if any? Is it too risky to use them or would the risk be worth it?

Another question I have is: Should I get 2x2GB RAM, or 3x1GB RAM? I hear that 32 bit systems only work up to 3GBs, so the added cost doesn't seem worth it. Are there any other benefits of having lots of 1GB of RAM rather than two 2GBs, or vice versa?

If you cannot overclock from the bios, your motherboard will lack the ability to overclock as a whole. Software overclockers are actually very dangerous unless they are custom tailored to work on a motherboard. NTune is a prime example of this disaster in action. My e8500 was pushed to 4.75ghz for benching settings, so if you want to get one, an overclockable motherboard might be worth an extra 100 dollars.

As for the memory issue, motherboards operate ram in dual channel, which means you need an equal pairs of ram. Even if the usable capacity is the same, 3x1 is slower than 2x2 because of a shitstorm of stuff having to do with bandwidth. Besides, 4 gigs is dirt cheap, I've seen it around for 60 dollars. In fact, if you want, I have a set of memory that you could use, and would be willing to let go for cheap.

This is fucking lame.

I regret getting my 9600 gt, I wish I put in a little more money for a 9800 gtx + or HD4850.

Now I have to stick with my 17" monitor for a year fuck sake this is lame.

:(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

At 12/15/08 05:30 PM, ThoseSneakyFrench wrote:

If you cannot overclock from the bios, your motherboard will lack the ability to overclock as a whole. Software overclockers are actually very dangerous unless they are custom tailored to work on a motherboard. NTune is a prime example of this disaster in action. My e8500 was pushed to 4.75ghz for benching settings, so if you want to get one, an overclockable motherboard might be worth an extra 100 dollars.

No big deal. 3.2ghz dual core is nothing to bitch about for awhile.

I'll wait until next year. Besides with the new i7 boards, it'd be stupid to upgrade too much right now. I'm only going to upgrade about 250 dollars this year, next year I'll be spending...probably near 1k if I can get a job.

As for the memory issue, motherboards operate ram in dual channel, which means you need an equal pairs of ram. Even if the usable capacity is the same, 3x1 is slower than 2x2 because of a shitstorm of stuff having to do with bandwidth. Besides, 4 gigs is dirt cheap, I've seen it around for 60 dollars. In fact, if you want, I have a set of memory that you could use, and would be willing to let go for cheap.

I think my father will be buying some for me for Christmas, thanks for the offer, though.

Oh and to Taco, I know the feeling. So disappointed I didn't get a better motherboard. I could have put in two graphics cards, overclocked, all sorts of stuff if I had just spent 50 dollars more.

30" dell monitors for 750!

Fuck man, if you can afford these by any stretch, get them. The thing that makes these so special is the 2560x1600 resolution. You need one hell of a graphics solution to drive these monitors, but it's worth it.

Specs

At 12/16/08 06:09 PM, ThoseSneakyFrench wrote: 30" dell monitors for 750!

Fuck man, if you can afford these by any stretch, get them. The thing that makes these so special is the 2560x1600 resolution. You need one hell of a graphics solution to drive these monitors, but it's worth it.

Specs

Edit: They sold out in five minutes flat!

At 12/16/08 06:09 PM, ThoseSneakyFrench wrote: 30" dell monitors for 750!

Fuck man, if you can afford these by any stretch, get them. The thing that makes these so special is the 2560x1600 resolution. You need one hell of a graphics solution to drive these monitors, but it's worth it.

Specs

Nice 14 ms response and 1:700 contrast ratio...

You do realize that it doesn't make much of a difference. I looked up the specs of my monitor, and it has a 16ms response and an 800:1 ratio. I've never had ghosting in games, and it's plenty vibrant for me.

At 12/17/08 04:51 AM, ThoseSneakyFrench wrote: You do realize that it doesn't make much of a difference. I looked up the specs of my monitor, and it has a 16ms response and an 800:1 ratio. I've never had ghosting in games, and it's plenty vibrant for me.

Speaking of shitty monitors, I use an LCD screen not made for PC gaming really, 19", and the thing washes out blacks alot of the time. It's very ugly. How do I fix this besides cranking the brightness way up?

Try messing around with other settings, like contrast and color settings on your monitor, and also on ATI's control panel.. For me, cranking up the digital vibrance made things look a lot better. If you can't get the blacks to display properly without turning something up to an uncomfortable level, then you'll need a new monitor, unfortunately. Fear not though, that shit is cheap these days.

Ding.

Yesterday I loaded up Half Life 2 on my aging Computer(was one of the best in 2005, but hasn't be upgraded since), and it crashed and gave me a black screen that wouldn't go away and the only way to get rid of it was to shut the computer down.

I tried the Pirates, Vikings and Knights mod for Half-Life 2, and the same thing happened. I also tried Fallout 3 which also crashed. When I finally got to the root of the problem I found out that the "nv4_disp display driver" was not working and had caused the computer to crash.

My Graphics Card is a Nvidia 7900GS and I have 1gb of RAM if that helps, I think that I could simply upgrade my drivers, but I don't know which is which and when I downloaded the lastest my Steam Options showed a basic 9.0 Nvidia Driver instead of the 9.0c version.

In it's time, that was indeed an awesome card, but it's old nonetheless. You could try finding the drivers on Nvidia's website, however, the older cards are only made to be compatible up to a certain version. Your best bet would be to search for "7900GS WHQL Drivers" on an archive of some sort. Google is your friend.

Remember to install the drivers as I outlined on page 2, otherwise you could run into problems.

Palit rox

At 12/21/08 04:58 PM, TacoFreak wrote: Palit rox

Orly?

I'm getting this problem when I try to boot up my rig.

Basically sometimes it will boot up like normal, but sometimes the monitor screen will stay black and I will have to press the reset button once or multiple times to get it to start up. Another way to do it is the switch off the PSU in the back, and switch it back on and turn on the computer.

This started happening after I got my aftermarket cpu cooler. Not enough power from my PSU?

Ok, so I am a complete beginner at computer building and I wanted to give it a try, but I don't know anyone IRL who had built one before. Any tips? Right now I'm just browsing the internet trying to find out what I need and how much it will cost.

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83 GHz
Motherboard: EVGA nForce 780i SLI Mainboard
Graphics Cards (Dual): EVGA GeForce 9800 GX2
RAM: 8GB G-Skill DDR2
Hard Drive: Samsung 1TB Hard Drive
Optical Drive: HP dvd1070

Still in the process of overclocking this machine.

Nice rig.

Got new 800 Mhz RAM, 4GB, and a 640GB harddrive today, boosting my overall space up to 890GBs or so. That's all I'll be doing to this computer. Next year, I'll be looking into a new Motherboard, new processor, new graphics card(s), new DDR3 RAM possibly. Anyone know anything about the new i7 shit? Think that'll be industry standard by next Christmas? God my computer will be dated by then :(

Oh, by the way. I removed a fan off of one of my older computers processor. Do I need to reapply heat glue to the processor or is it alright to play some old games on it? I don't want it to burn up, considering it's my only XP computer I have left. Plus...it's the first computer I put together :(

I'm not sure if I've asked this before, but if I have, please, ignore me or point me to the last page: Should it be fine adding a second hard drive without doing anything beforehand? I'm hoping I can just plug it in, turn it on, and play. I'm aware there's some issues with Vista erasing data when you add another large partition onto it, or something of the sort, but I can deal with that if the issue should arise.

If you're in the market for a new Radeon 4870, wait until mid-January. nVidia's introducing a new card, the GTX 295, and ATI will be lowering all their prices in response. :D

I feel like I got completely shafted by getting a GTX 280, now that the 55nm 260 c216s are out. Those cards can actually overclock high enough to surpass my OCed 280, and for $150 less.

But, an amazing thing happened this Christmas. Because my mom was doing extremely poorly financially, her family got together and decided to give my sister and I larger gifts to make up for it. I currently have $980 in hand. Enough to get this or this. But, for 250 more, I can get the LG 30'', which has triple the contrast ratio. Should I buy or save? OR I can use the money for some awesome upgrades, and even try stretching an i7 rig.

Also, how do those GX2s treat you, Sniperwolf?

I'd hold onto it for your next major upgrade. Your computer is pretty good as it is. You can get a really good monitor for a lot less than 980 dollars, too. Make that shit last.

Sup, can I join?

Since I wrote a message of, maybe 9000 characters, and then clicked "clear form", for I thought it was "post", tired as I am, I have no real motivation left to write such a long message. Again.

Therefore, I'm going to give you some quick info about what my current build is made of, and what I'm going to do with it.

Q6600, stock
P5Q-e
4870, stock
4GB 1066MHz RAM (getting 800MHz since I'm not running them in 2.1v)
Antec Twelve Hundred

Going to buy:
Water cooling (would like some recommendations)
Phenom II X4 940 (overclocking to 4.4-4.5GHz, etc)
New motherboard (AM2+)
Maybe another 4870

Now, would my Corsair 750W PSU run all this well? Would I get screamed at by my mom, because the electrical bill went up crazy?

And, should I just get a new computer in fall-winter, 2009?

If you're going to get a new motherboard/processor, get i7. The phenom II is only competitive with the C2Qs, so if you're going to spend money on a new platform, why not go X58?

Ok, after ages of delaying I'm getting the RAM tonight or tommorow, I had a quick check to make sure they still had some in stock, and a quick check over for my Motherboard.

The only problem (hopefuly not) is that the RAM runs at 800Mhz ("This memory has been verified to operate at 800MHz") and aparently my motherboard can only run up to 533Mhz ("Supported Memory: 400-533Mhz"). It did however say that the FSB (not sure what that is) runs at 800-1066Mhz.

So, in short, can my computer run this RAM?

Your computer won't run it. You have to get cheaper RAM, and really, really should get a new motherboard/computer. Thing is outdated.

At 12/28/08 06:17 PM, Jezuz wrote: Your computer won't run it. You have to get cheaper RAM, and really, really should get a new motherboard/computer. Thing is outdated.

I found a Motherboard that can replace my current one *Link*, But is replacing a Motherboard a simple task? I doubt it is but I'm hoping that its simple once you get the hang of it.

*Sorry if you know any of this, I'm just going to try to cover as many bases as possible :x*

It's not simple, but it's certainly not hard if you have a laptop. Basically, you can find step 1 to last guides on the internet that explain pretty much everything about building a new computer.

Another thing to consider is your parts; Are they all compatible with the new motherboard? If not, can you replace them right now? Even then, you might need a new power supply to even run them, otherwise you're looking at blue screens up the ass, plus possible hardware failure.

If you want, send me a link to everything you have in your computer. Or just give me the names. Search 'dxdiag', then run the program. It'll give you a detailed look at most everything in your computer, minus the power supply. To find that out you'd have to open up the computer and look for your sticker, which should have a 3 digit number on it, which tells you your wattage.

Hope any of this helps, even a little.

Hi, everyone.

Wow, a lot of do-it-your-selfers here. Very cool. I've been building "Frankenboxes" for a while, and it's good to see that I'm not the only one.

My rig, from the outside, looks like a cheap AOpen clone. It's not bad on the inside, though. Has 8 bays for hard drives, 4 bays for CD/DVD and other full-height devices, and is pretty easy to work on. This machine has evolved over many years, and will continue to evolve. Here's what's under the hood right now:

[ ] Intel DP45SG Mobo
[ ] Intel Q9550 2.83 Quad Core, OC'd to 3.1 ish with huge StarTech Cooler
[ ] 16GB OCZ 1333 mhz DDR3 RAM (4 x 4GB)
[ ] 4 WD 500 GB SATA drives, raid 1 (mirrored)
[ ] ATI HD3870 Video, 512MB, minor OC
[ ] 750 Watt P/S - AMD branded (I told you it was a Frankenbox!)

It's a real sweet gamer box - but I have run into a problem with the DP45SG that others on the Intel site seem to have seen as well - but have a hard time explaining or fixing permanently: If you unplug the power from the back of the rig, and let it sit for 10 minutes, then plug it back in, the power light on the on-button is on - as if it were already on. Press the power-on button, and the rig starts ok. But once it's on for a little while, and you want to do a reboot - well, that's where the second funky thing happens. EVERY reboot makes the system shut down, pause a moment, and then restart. But after a few of these, it won't restart again. It just sits on the black screen - no BIOS, no anything. Unplug the box and let it sit for 10 minutes - and you're good to go.

By the way, once it's running, it works fine, runs cool, and gives me no grief. Play for hours at a time with no hiccups.

Now, to let you know what I have tried so far to fix this thing (after many hours searching for clues on the Interweb):

1) Swapped out power supplies and verified all power / switch / panel connections
2) Removed the MoBo and installed a thin, plastic insulation layer in the case to prevent grounding and shorting issues
3) Swapped out RAM a few times. Seems like the MoBo is very picky as to the RAM type and speeds.
4) Tried it with plain-vanilla components (simple PCI vid card, single hard drive, etc)
5) Did "Out-Of-Box" setup on a piece of styrofoam to eliminate all case issues.
6) Turned off all OC - ran it all at base speeds

No matter what I tried, the results have been the same. Normally, I can deal with plugging it in before I use it, but when it becomes a pain in the posterior is when I am installing a game or system update that requires multiple reboots - and it gets stuck in the middle!

I was going to update the BIOS, but I heard some horror stories that the BIOS updates made matters worse. Nice....

So, if anyone out there has any ideas or can point me in the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks in advance for your help!