The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Holy crap - that is a THIIIIIINN ClIENT. Are you telling me there's no cpu at all? Well, every single piece of anything does have some kind of microcontroller chip - so I guess there is no such thing as completely dumb hardware - but you did say "no pc hardware in the case." I guess that means no motherboard, no ram array, and no conventional cpu, not even something as basic as a pentium.

I am interested in hearing what Sam's thin clients consist of. I have to think that the PC has at minimum a pentium, and more likely a modern pentium core i3 dual core processor without HT, like a family member's all-in-one gateway - the speed on a conversion test I use was 460 on each core, whereas my 4 ghz p4 with HT got 230 - on the single core - with HT turned off. The desktop I am using now got 200 with or without HT.

So tell us Sam, are your thin clients as stripped down as what Jeff is talking about, or do you at least give the people some kind of basic $400 monitor/PC combination.


6450 is Nice HTPC card
By the way, Jeff, that fan-less 6450 you thought might be in that thin client you looked at, on campus - I have recently in the last 6 months bought two of those cards, for two different computers, for just under $40 each from newegg. They have 1 gig of memory, and an hdmi port, dvi and vga, as you mentioned. They are great for HTPC usage. You can do some light gaming - I was playing Far Cry (original) at 1600x1200 fully maxed. I just got the second one a couple of months ago for the sunroom - I pulled the high-end nvidia GTX 285 card out, and put one of these in, driving a 50 foot hdmi line to a 46" 1080p tv that neighbor was getting rid of. I also run a 1600x1200 monitor through the dvi cable - I'm using extended desktop.

This is what I just did to the i7 X58 computer, with 10 gigs of Ram (one ram stick turned out to be bad - that might explain why I had so much trouble getting a stable overclock - to the point where I gave up!) That motherboard allows us to switch sound back and forth from the amd hdmi sound, to the realtek built-in sound driving the small pc speakers when we aren't playing a Power DVD 13 movie, or a YouTube video on the TV. The other 6450 went into a compaq micro-tower core 2 duo dual core E7300 chip 4 gigs of ram $100 on ebay, 360 speed on the conversion test, that a friend is using. But in that case, when the 6450 went in, the motherboard kicked out the realtek soundmax drivers - so you get hdmi sound, or nothing at all. It works for that friend, who doesn't have a monitor anyway besides his tv, but I think if he did pick up a monitor one day, that a small discrete sound card, or maybe one of those usb sound cards, would overcome that limitation of sound only through the hdmi cable, and allow switching to pc speakers like the i7 allows you to do.

(I'm keeping the gtx 285 around - I liked the little $100 compaq so much I bought one for myself - and I might put mine in the sunroom and take the 10 gig ram i7 back as my business desktop. More and more I am getting used to xp mode - running xp as a virtual machine within windows 7 - so I could possibly see myself switching to that computer some day. That's why I have checked into the discrete sound card idea.)

Rich

 

Nope Rich, nothing in them but a network controller and disk controller along with some basic I/O hardware. They are very simplistic.

A sound card can never hurt. Modern motherboard sound finally outclasses basic sound cards, but a mid range card can output very nice sound.

Currently considering a newer Creative or HT Omega card myself. The most hassle-free way to get all types of surround sound to my receiver is analog cables. HDMI supports everything perfectly but has some hardware quirks I don't like. Optical, while a beautiful interface, is limited to basic Dolby Digital and DTS, and no lossless surround ala Dolby HD and DTS Master Audio. No PCM surround also so no game surround period unless the game has a specific Dolby Digital mode. Only a very few support Dolby Digital, and even fewer still actually work with it.

Analog supports all formats perfectly, but unless you use shielded cables it tends to have lots of background noise. Just ordered a set of very decent shielded cables from monoprice for just that purpose. Also, when using analog, the PC sound chip does all the decoding instead of the receiver. If it's a low quality chip, the receiver is usually better. This happens to be the best onboard sound I've ever heard though, and even has the little LED strip showing that it's isolated from the rest of the board to reduce noise. It's comparable enough to the receiver in quality that I'm definitely willing to give it a try. Might even throw the Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty back in and deal with its quirks if I'm so inclined. In a technically perfect situation, they should all sound identical because proper audio quality means your hardware won't color your sound. Unfortunately this is almost never the case, so one solution out of the dozen or so I've tried technically has to be the best.

Optical has the best sound clarity and transparency by a country mile, but has many limitations. HDMI is similar in quality and has better capabilities, but has a few issues with my setup. Analog should be close enough, with all the capabilities of HDMI... If I end up not liking it, I'm going to stick with Optical, and deal with having no game surround or HD surround.

 

Sam I'm pretty sure that spammer is quoting you from several years ago.

 

Yeah, I would say that 4870 reference from that spammer goes back a few hundred years.

===================

Wow, Jeff, you know your sound inside and out!

I have a question for you - not about getting high-fidelity awesome sound - just about getting regular passable stereo sound through a cheap satellite stereo system - a couple of small pc speakers, with a floor woofer - probably under $30 way back whenever I picked it up.

I'm running that AMD 6450 video card with hdmi out (and with hdmi sound of course) plus dvi and vga. I want to be able to switch off the hdmi sound, and switch to the cheap satellite stereo system, when the TV is off, and when I am on the main desktop, the 20" dell on the dvi port, not the extended desktop, the big-screen 46" tv on the hdmi port.

So let me ask you:
As I mentioned, just on this computer, putting the AMD 6450 hdmi card into the little microtower hp compaq DC5800 E7300 core 2 duo, has the result of - you get hdmi sound, or nothing at all.

When I try to re-install the Soundmax drivers, it says "no device present."

The installation of the 6450 hdmi card, somehow negates the on-board intel HD audio - turns it off - which probably happens when I install Catalyst and thereby activate the AMD hdmi audio.

I looked through the simplistic bios and - I don't know - could I try a different IRQ for the intel HD audio? Right now the IRQ is 5 along with about six other items, intel usb controller, intel sata controller, etc that also share IRQ 5 (there are a few things on IRQ 10. I don't know what interrupt the hdmi uses - maybe I should look at the microtower that has the 6450, and see what IRQ it is using.

Why would the soundmax drivers no longer see the on-board intel audio chipset?


I do not have that same problem with the evga X58 i7 motherboard.

Putting the identical hd6450 into the pci-e 16x graphics slot of the evga X58 motherboard does not do this - you go to control panel and you can switch from amd sound through the hdmi, or realtek sound through the on-board audio out jacks. So we can power the PC satellite speakers with floor woofer, or switch over to the TV sound (or external speakers connected to the TV) through the 50 foot hdmi cable.

If this is just a limitation of the simple bios on the microtower, I have to believe that a discrete sound card would be a way around the problem - there are several empty pci-e 1x slots available on the microtower.

Here are two options that I have come up with:

There is this $44 asus xonar card at newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132052



Or here is this $16 usb driver-less audio "card" at amazon (pretty good reviews unlike the under-$10 similar items) http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KDJ7FGU...TF8&colid=24NEGW28SWDS1&coliid=I2KJ8NUMU8WAKM




The $16 usb device - you stick the speaker cable in - no drivers, no control panel, and apparently the sound is not awful.

Any thoughts?

Rich


EDIT - look what I just found:

Hi,would like to know if the ATI Radeon 1GB HD6450 PCI-E DVI HDMI Video Card will be able to run in a dc5800.



Thanks


Reply
0



Re: dc5800 videocard upgrade
10-25-2013 04:14 PM

Hi:



Yes, that card will work just fine.



Make sure you first uninstall the current video adapter in the device manager, shut down the PC and install the new video card.



Because the new video card has an onboard HDMI audio chip, it will disable the onboard audio as well as the onboard video.



To enable the onboard audio, after you install the graphics driver, reboot the PC, go into the BIOS>Advanced>Device Options menu, and change the onboard audio setting to Enabled.



Save the setting there by hitting the F10 key and again when you exit (save settings and exit).



After you reboot, the onboard audio will be back.​

Hmmmm - from another post - they are talking about a part of the bios which you do not see, until you install the card. I should mess around with my friend's DC5800 which has the card - take a set of earbuds over and see if I can find the above-referenced bios setting.

 

No question about it, ddp, those are great cards - definitely worth trudging through the snow for 5 miles to get to the nearest trading post, to see if the newegg package has arrived.

 

Hahahahahaha!

A post office two blocks away! It hasn't snowed for a month and a half!! If you hadn't given me those coordinates I would have sworn you moved to Seattle.

Wow, global warming isn't a myth after all!!!!

 

Wait a second. I might be younger than you (who isn't) but I wasn't born yesterday. Kevin lives in the good ol US of A, and you are in Knuck-land - which is NORTH of the USofA.

As I recall, you live 3 hours north of Kevin - didn't you say so yourself? I remember the post: "Omega, if you can, please fly 3 hours due north and get me out of here, I can't take the cold anymore!" I might be mis-quoting slightly, it was about a year ago.

For cryin out loud, Kevin lives East of Portland - he's south of Washington state - so what manner of map trickenometry are you trying to pull on me?

Let's see - Toronto - where is that - Eastern Canada where the French people live?


What the heck! The purple dot is Toronto. Well, for cryin out loud - no wonder the Finnians got lost and crossed the border - you guys have practically invaded the US!! If you were any further into the US you'd be in Miami!

 

Oh yeah, now I remember - somebody said "There's all those Canadians passing overhead - get your shotguns!" That always put me in a big rush, but I could never remember where I hid the buckshot!

 

That's right - and how did that blatant act of terrorism not cause a diplomatic flap - I guess cause nobody drowned. Haha - fooled ya! Just like those Finnians, we can take everything you Knucks can throw at us and we just calmly land in the river like it wasn't nothin special!

 

hahahaha - well, in that case I guess we'll hold off for a while.

 

Well, when you put it like that, I’ll have to call my Finnian friends and see what we can do about all of this.


It’s one thing for Canada to be north of the US, but to have Canada encroaching deep south into US territory “from sea to shining sea and south of Canada” as the song goes.

That city of Toronto is actually south of most of upper New York state, not to mention Vermont and Maine.

What is there about the word, "North" that you Canadians do not understand? That is some sneaky business indeed.


And then, add to that, training geese to interfere with our airports!


So in anticipation of the upcoming attack to “put things back to how they are supposed to be” I have been off secretly training in Far Cry 4.


WTF!



WHAT THE HELL – DDP – WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?




WAIT A SECOND! EVERYBODY JUST CALM DOWN!!




My goodness, excuse me, that’s not him. DDP doesn’t have that nice of a smile. Sorry for the false alarm!




My god, what a fright!

I thought ddp had tracked me down right to my secret training area! I'm giving him too much credit for how he trained those geese. After all, we did land safely on the Hudson river, right?


Man, there are a lot of people hanging around here. It makes me nervous. But I don’t see ddp anywhere.


These guys aren’t ddp – time to get back to work.



Okay, here we go. This is one of my Finnian buddies. Take note of that machine gun, ddp.


Do you think you have any canadian geese who can survive a heavy dose of lead from that thing?


My Finnian buddy loves to give canadian geese lots of lead to eat for their journey south.





I know now that Toronto is south of upstate New York, and ddp is 60 miles above. But it still gets cold, so I have made sure I’m training in a cold climate.


Those snowy mountains make sure I’m ready for Canadian frigid weather.




Also I’m practicing my aerial reconnaissance skills in my trusty gyrocopter – the postal service workers aren’t the only guys who have these things, and they are used for more purposes than landing on the White House lawn as a publicity stunt.



Like, how about flying down the street from the local post office, and dropping a bomb on ddp’s house?




You didn’t think of that, did you ddp?

You sure you’re still ready to challenge me and my Finnian buddies?



Me and the Finnians might come by land – might come by air – might come by the Great Lakes!




"Hey dudes, is that ddp over there!"



Man look at him take off! Wait for me!




DDP, these Finnian guys sure are in a hurry to get a piece of you.



Now here’s an interesting weapon. Maybe I’ll take this nice mortar with me on my trip up to Canada, soon to be renamed The Finnian Republic.



Let’s see, fly over and drop a bomb? Or just target ddp's house with this giant mortar?



Hey, what’s going on over here?


Is that ddp in a bear suit?



No, that’s not ddp in a bear suit.

That’s a bear in a bear suit!


Well, I’ll be darned. Vicious animals in this Far Cry 4 training area. All the better to take care of those vicious canadian geese that like to mess with our airplanes.


Should I shoot the bear? What is he doing?


Oh, sorry – he’s just having lunch.


Hey Mr. Bear, could I interest you in a goose?




What’s over here? Is that DDP’s house?


Let’s see, 60 miles north of Toronto, on the same street about 2 blocks east of the post office.


It’s not an igloo, but maybe ddp’s house looks just like this one.



Well that’s enough training for today – time to go eat.


I’m hungry. All this training really increases the appetite.

Let’s see, fish, game or fowl?


I seem to have a craving for fowl tonight.


Duck.


Yeah, roast duck.


Or maybe ........... roast goose.


Yeah, even better - roast Canadian goose!


Perfect!


Rich

 

Kept meaning to respond to that earlier post but never got round to it, so now that Rich has given us a nudge

The thin clients we predominantly use are IGEL UD3 units - they're basic VIA single-core CPUs, a gigabyte of memory, a 2GB CF card running the OS and basic video controller running Linux. You need to remember all processing is off-site, the CPU is only there to run the Citrix ICA client to accept keyboard/mouse entry and send it to the server and display the image received in return.
They're a convenient 'drop in' replacement for PCs when using citrix, but they are pretty expensive for what they are, coming in around the same price as an entry-level windows workstation with a higher spec (and running windows to boot!)
There are some far cheaper ones another of our clients insisted on using, the NComputing N500, but you get what you pay for, they're very basic, the config utility is extremely slow to use and they're missing a few fairly important features, so we try not to use them.
Latterly we've been trying out some full windows boxes in thin-client form factor, the Lenovo ThinkCentre M53 TinyPC - they're impressively small, run windows well enough if not overly speedy, but they do have at least one Lenovo quirk - I lost half an afternoon trying to get the dictation software to work with them only to discover it only doesn't work if the dictaphone's docked to the USB3 port. The USB2s work fine!
The nice thing about all these units is they fairly easily mount onto the back of PC monitors, which we've done extensively at our biggest client.
The IGEL units will support up to two displays - the original units (up to 2014) via a DVI-I to DVI-D+VGA splitter cable (as the units only come with the one DVI-I port) - the newer units support it natively as they have a DVI-I and a DVI-D on the back.
We have a couple of dual-display setups running off these IGEL units, using 21.5" Iiyama IPS monitors. When doing this for existing PCs, we often have to add little PCIe graphics cards to get the right amount of ports - the HD5450 / HD6450 is exactly the sort of thing we use. We have a few HD5450s, an HD3450 and a couple of GT210s around the place to do this.
Oddly enough, when I had to install 20 new HP machines at another customer (they only went with 'hybrid cloud' rather than 'full cloud' so they're using office365 email and an on-site NAS to replace their servers rather than hosted virtual desktop so they need proper PCs still) - I was gobsmacked to find out that in 2015, Intel's latest integrated graphics in their high-end CPUs - doesn't support dual-link DVI!
So for the one person who we ordered a 2560x1440 monitor, I had to go and get another said HD5450 from a shop nearby to cover that.
The nuisance with these things is the machines are low-profile form factor, so although small cards like the HD5450 fit, because they never come with mounting brackets for low-profile systems, I have to just take them off and leave the cards not screwed in, which makes the machines a bit fragile. Oh well, I've only had one issue with that so far where a PC has been kicked over and dislodged the GPU. I doubt it'll be my last though!

As for internet connectivity, bandwidth requirement is minimal - around 1Mbps downstream per user and 0.05-0.1Mbps upstream per user is usually enough. The important factor is latency - latency needs to be kept below 30ms ideally, and below 100ms definitely, to avoid it being annoying to use - so if you're using ADSL, you need enough bandwidth available such that bandwidth use on the line isn't going to push the latency up.
The general net effect of this is that for up to about 10-12 users, a normal ADSL2 line will suffice (though Annex M is far preferable to get the 2.5Mbps upstream speed) but for more, you ideally want FTTC - and where that's not available, EFM or dedicated fibre-optic.



As far as sound cards go, a sound card is typically better than no card for quality, but functionality, not always. I find cheap sound card drivers can be pretty poor so I've just stuck with Realtek. Especially now that I'm using optical, there's no interference to speak of, so I'm happy enough. It's come on a long way since the P4/Athlon XP days where onboard sound quality was dreadful and a cheap Audigy card was a necessary purchase for a decent machine.


So, some news - I'm starting another machine build!
First for about 3 years, I finally decided to bite the bullet and build a compact machine to take to LAN parties. My 9-year old NZXT Lexa has done an admirable job and the PC inside it has been almsot faultlessly reliable since being built in 2012, I couldn't be happier with it.
However, it is starting to look a little sad how scratched and marked the case is getting, plus a full-size mid tower in a suitcase is a little tough on the arms for a 200 mile train journey! When spring-cleaning, snapping one of the case's feet off was the motivation needed. I'll probably glue it back on soon, it still functions fine as a foot - just when you lift the PC up, the foot stays behind :S

So anyway, I've ordered the following:

Core i5 4690S
Gigabyte Z97N-WiFi
2x8GB XMS3 1600 CAS9
WD3003FZEX
256GB Crucial MX100
Gigabyte GTX960 ITX
Corsair RM650
Fractal Design Node 304 White

I was umming and ahhing about whether the extra few hundred mhz was worth the small increase in price for a while until I saw the 4690S - similar clock speed and turbo speed but with 22W lower TDP for only about 15% extra? No brainer!
There are some cheaper Mini-ITX boards out there for LGA1150 but none that I was all that happy with, so the Z97N-WiFi will do. Nothing special about the memory but amusingly this will be the most memory of any PC I've built so far
A standard 3TB games drive. I could stretch to 4TB but I didn't see much need. I've survived with a 750GB Seagate up until now. Only having used a little under half of the 480GB SSD in my main games PC, I figured 256 would be fine here for a PC that isn't used daily.
The GTX960 ITX is quite an interesting proposition. There's even a GTX970 version of it but even now 6 months after buying my first, GTX970s still aren't as cheap as when I bought mine - I didn't like the thought of that much heat dissipating into such a small case (hence why AMD was not an option) and really, having a LAN PC the same spec as my main desktop is a little silly! Considering it'll be driving a quarter of the pixels, I think a 960 will do just fine.
The PSU is pretty overkill, but having used one in my server, I know it's a fairly compact and quiet unit which I wanted, plus for some absurd reason the 650 is far cheaper than the 550. The only other unit I was strongly considering (Seasonic G-series) was very expensive to get hold of a modular version of and let's face it, unnecessary cables are your enemy in an ITX platform.

Most of the stuff is due Monday so I'm hoping to have it built and ready for a LAN event that weekend. Fingers crossed

 

Sam, when you say:

Do you have a picture showing how you have them mounted?

I happened to be browsing through my old computer descriptions today, and noticed that my former business desktop, the 3.2ghz "arcus" computer, has a via chipset with a 533 mhz bus, whereas my former 4 ghz gaming "sony" has an sis chipset, and 800mhz bus.

So when you say via, single core, 1 gig, that sure sounds like my old arcus, but I am pretty sure the single core is likely an i3 variant, and most certainly core family - what's the frequency - 2.66 ghz?

Yes, I have to say it again, that 6450 is an amazing card at $40 newegg. It also comes with a half-height slot adapter - you unplug one of the ports, and I can't remember which two ports are left. That would allow it to fit into one of those tiny thin cases you strap onto the back of those monitors.

But the 6450 yes indeed comes with a mounting bracket for low-profile (at least the Sapphire does! I have two of the short brackets - do you want me to mail them to you?)

That sounds good.

But don't even begin to tell me that you're considering dragging your 4k monitor to one of those events. I was shocked when I realized you trucked your first Dell 30" all over town - no wonder you eventually picked up a few stuck pixels!

My trusty dell, once I brought it in from the car - has NEVER left that trailer table. The most movement it has ever seen, is when I used to rotate the table around in order to make phone calls and use the 19" dell running from the old 2.8 ghz celeron p4 small mid-tower right next to the full tower spedo.

But recently, as I'm getting geared up to make phone calls again, I asked myself - "why did I ever make phone calls over there, when on this end of the trailer I could do all that and leave that other table strictly for gaming?" In other words, what do I have that other computer for?

When I worked out of a proper real estate office building, in a small private office for myself and my high school staffers, I used to use it, for myself, when making phone calls, viewing family pictures, etc. while talking to clients, to keep from staring at the walls, while my assistant used the main business computer, and my other assistant used the fastest computer - which I occasionally gamed on after-hours - as the print server. I printed out a lot of colorful material which I sent out via DHL to prospective clients.

But for now, it's just me - so switching tables, rotating it around - why? However - there is a certain psychology to it - you have to get into a particular ZONE when you make those phone calls for several hours at a time - and so I might have to continue on with that system when I finally start getting back to work.

(Remember when I used to game only on Tuesdays - Jeff came on with me one Tuesday and we did some Left 4 Dead together. After that I made a couple of big sales, and moved up from the pentium, and then I sort of went full-time gaming for a while. I have been on an extended leave of absence, lol. But my money is running out, so it's time to get back to work - Sam is inspiring me.) ​

LOL. My solution for that is silicone, either clear, or white. That is my glue of choice - stays flexible - but holds really well. The more of it you use, the stronger it is. But the thicker it is, the longer it takes to cure. Let it cure in place for a couple of days to reach maximum strength. That foot won't come off again.

For example, recently, the rear-view mirror suddenly popped off, in my pickup truck. Whatever glue was on there just dried out, and I jumped in the truck, and there was the mirror lying on the floor.

I wondered, "will silicone be strong enough to hold the base?" You can't use too much of it, because the mirror mounts onto the lip that is glued to the window. So I gave it a try, securing it in position with some masking tape. A week later I tried mounting the mirror. I didn't screw it into place, but it appears like it will work just fine.

However, the funny thing is, that I got used to having the entire windshield free to look through, and as I tend to drive defensively - something that I was taught when I drove one Christmas for UPS - I don't use the rear-view all that much as I tend to maintain my distance - more of a relaxed safer driving style.

Legally, as long as you have both side mirrors it is not against the law to have your rear view blocked, such as by towing a tall trailer, or by a tall load in the pickup. And my side mirrors give me an excellent view. So for the past month the mirror has just continued sitting there on the dash - if I get pulled over I'll explain to the officer that it just fell off "the other day" and I'm letting the silicone cure.

Well, the build sounds pretty nice. When you say "one quarter of the pixels" I breathed easier - no 4k monitor's gonna get trucked around Britain. So what are you taking with you, something in the 1080p 24" size range?

Jumping in a train and heading out 200 miles to a LAN event, that sounds like fun! That's Europe for you. We do actually have a train here with a station about 8 miles away in Irvine, connecting us to San Diego south of us, or to LA in the other direction. There is one rail, and that's it. Out here on the West coast, we certainly don't have anything like the train systems you Europeans have.

Well, have fun with the build!

Rich