The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Don't really know much about ghosting to be fair, but I do know a S-ATA hard disk will yield speed benefits.

 

Well, I'm looking at the hard drive prices - for the same $50 I can pick up a 320 gig Hitachi. But probably 250 would be enough - I only have 80gigs now on the XP drive (another 80 on the other drive.)

If I pick up a Sata drive (I really need it anyway since I'm running out of space - I have maybe 10gigs left and I'm going to be picking up new games with the upgrade, and I don't want to start taking off the old games) what drive does anybody recommend?

Regarding ghosting - I'll just check with PC trade Mo - he's the one who showed me how to ghost - I think the 80 will ghost over to the new 250 or 320 with no problems, as long as both are FAT.

 

Don't buy a Hitachi drive...

 

Do you like this Seagate:
seagate 250gb $50 ... or ...
seagate 250gb $55
I don't see any difference.

 

Ray, I doubt gaming on a laptop would be as enjoyable as I enjoy gaming on my 360. Each to his own, I think consoles have thier own benifits. Sure it cant do all the stuff a PC can but it's fun as hell and I can play on the big screen

 

All laptops have VGA outs, so all laptops will work with HDTVs.

 

Yeah, try playing a 4 player splitscreen with a laptop though.

Speaking of which, you wanna play Halo?

 

I'm about to enter another LAN Supreme Commander game...
Agreed on the split-screen, that's one thing consoles are good for.

 

PCs are better for widescreen. 24" of 1920 x 1200 glory that makes a 50" HDTV look weak.

 

Hey estuansis,

But you liked hooking up your PC to your sister's 50" HD - I thought you said you noticed more detail.

 

For sure. But the overall image quality is much better on a 24" screen.

 

hehe, Well I do have a 65" LCD...

 

Ahhh, the image quality. Ok. My first upgrade will be from the 17" crt to the kind of screen you have, 24" 1920x1200. Then one day in the distant future we'll all have to follow Sam, who is "gorging on pixels" in his words, at almost double the pixel count 2560x1600. But the gfx cards are going to have to be more powerful for that.

Sam, correct me if I wrong, but as I recall you were never quite able to run crysis ULTRA high, even cracked ultra high, at steady 30-40 fps, at your full native 2560x1600? Am I remembering correctly?

By the way, turns out the Norton Ghost I have is 2002, no upgrade available unless I pay $60 for the new program to get the Sata support that was added in 2003. But some forum said to get Maxtor MaxBlast. So I downloaded it - 126mb - to take my xp 80 gig disk, and put the entire thing on a new 250gig disk, including the operating system - everything. Nice xp based program, looks easy to use. You set all the parameters, then restart xp, and it does all the cloning. Cool!!!
-rich

 

rich IICR the only difference is that its an open box, btu it is 100% working condition, so go for that.

i would personally take the E5200 over the E6750, due to its lower power requirements, high OCability (well the E6750 has this aswell) its penryn core, and 45nm proccess!

also i used that PSU with a Q6600 4GB RAM and a 9800GT!

get it!!

the AS5 is good, i prefer the non conductive pastes which dont need curing either, but its a very good paste.

as for lapping see tjharlow on youtube, he is brillaint, check out his guides:
part 1
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=sVXuZTuoEuE
part2
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5L1s1-nXj0o

 

normally with a new chipset, you will need to do a fresh install, but i think that is only if the OS is an OEM version.

but personalyl i would fresh install, as alot of drivers etc will be completely different.

 

That's correct, 20 is about the max. However, Crysis is still almost the only game to be that demanding, games like COD4, Half Life 2 Episode Two and the original supreme commander all make silky smooth frame rates at that resolution, 4xAA included, 8x for Episode Two and Portal.

 

And have to reinstall ALL OF MY PROGRAMS AND GAMES!!!!!!

I was just reading the maxblast manual - I am going to add a second partition to the 250gb for vista - I'll set aside 20gb.

You know what, I just realized, XP doesn't like you to take a hard drive and put it on another motherboard, without calling the factory to get an unlock. Typically XP just won't boot. It checks the motherboard identification. I am screwed!! I can't call the factory for reasons known only to myself.

So maybe I'll be forced into re-installing xp no matter what I do. What a pain!! I better make sure I have all of my Saved Game folders for all of my games saved on my external hard drive.

BUT WAIT!! If I install XP over on top of the other XP, using the Repair option, that might work, if XP sees the existing XP when I put the CD in. I know you want me to do a fresh install - but XP on top of the old XP might save me from reinstalling all my programs and data.

 

im sure you can install XP over XP, but programs will ahev to be installed and games, but atleast you wont loose them so to say,t he data will eb there. ideally for vista, with a few programs you want 30-40GBs.

i reinstall my OS every few months, so what i have done is making a partition for games, one for my docs, my pics, my music, etc, one for other storage such as torrents, one as a back up of the applications hidden folder, and one 50GB for vista.

the apps folder and games one is very very handy, as when i reinstall my OS, i just gotta renistall my programs, but bookmarks, and settings are all there, and i can just copy to the new apps folder. also games dont need to be reinstalled this way, the only thing needed is to install DX and thats it. oh and boot up the game, then close it, go to the registry and add the key for it.

320GB:
50GB 0S
rest for storage games.

but with my new 640 i am going to buy soon, this is what i will want.

50GB OS
20GB Pagefile
20GB Apps Folder
100GB Users folder (this has my docs, my music, my videos, my pics etc)
150GB games
60GB Essential Progams/driver install files
rest for storage.

 

Shaff, thanks for the lapping videos - I started watching the first one - WOW! I see some related videos - applying artic silver, etc. FANTASTIC!! I never would have thought of going to you tube - but so much better to watch a video than read an article about it! THANKS!

Man, shaff, that is one lot of partitions you have there. I don't quite see the advantage of all those partitions. For a second OS on the same physical drive, YES one does need another partion, but other than that, I don't see the point.

I normally just like to have one giant partition, but in this case I want to add a second small partition for Vista - just the operating system, no programs or data. This big 250gb will be my D drive (C is W98 boot) so the Vista partition will be E. Any programs I install when I am in Vista I will install to D, so I just need the Vista guts - will 10 gigs be enough, or would 20 gigs be better? (I like having one big partition, because then I don't have unallocated space floating around.)

Normally the repair method of installing xp over itself, means you DO NOT have to reinstall programs. It doesn't tear apart the registry. I've done it a couple of times. It works well. I just read a post of a guy who says if you take out some of your settings, like agp, etc, before you remove your old mobo, XP will boot per usual???!!!

Lastly, Shaff, I see you like both cpus, but we're sticking with the 5200 sound like, and I didn't quite get the top part of your post about open box - you mean the new mobo from newegg? - so are we staying with your build and the msi new board or going for boozer's used Asus board for $80?
-Rich

 

The E6750(4MB of cache) outperforms the E7200, and the E7200 has that Penryn core and 3MB of cache. The E5200 has even less, 2MB. IMHO, cache is very important these days.