The computer and electronics super geek thread

[David Hingtgen]

While I am traditionally an Nvidia fan and have only ever had their stuff, lately I've been thinking ATI for when I upgrade.

[jenius]

What's your price range going to be on the graphics card?

[505thAirborne]

What's your price range going to be on the graphics card?

I'd like to keep it under $85.00 or so. Though my PC has an ATI in it, I've usually been a Nvidia fan myself.

[Dangaioh]

Hey Chewie, thats the odd thing, no black or blue screen. My windows background and Mozilla Browser open with MW, Ebay & Youtube all showing when it locks up. yesterday I downloaded Driver Detective an ran that through to see if anything was out of date or needed replaced, sure wish the PC repair store had done that first. Seems to be running ok right now.

But I was reading online that Windows Vista & 7 have some classic glitches to them. I think I am still going to order a new Graphics Card though and at least know that item is replaced and keep narrowing down what might be wrong.

As of now my Dell 540 has a ATI Radeon HD 3450 256MB Graphics card, any recommendations on a better replacement? GeForce??

Thanks guys!

I presume that this is your system: http://www.dell.com/...dio-desktop/pd.

Before buying a new graphics card, you may want to ensure that you have space and enough power, to run the card. Also, you may want to do some cable management, if (and a couple pre-built PC companies are guilty of it) the wires are sloppily placed inside your system... which can cause major heating, and at times... dust bunny issues... those rabbits can breed.

Check out, any of these sites to verify how much power you will need.

• http://support.asus....px?SLanguage=en
• http://www.antec.outervision.com/
• http://extreme.outer...ucalculator.jsp

I'd like to keep it under $85.00 or so. Though my PC has an ATI in it, I've usually been a Nvidia fan myself.

http://www.pricewatch.com/video_cards/

I also have 1 old Nvidia 7600 gt, and two 8600 gt's that I might be willing to sell.

Edited April 4, 2011 by Dangaioh

[David Hingtgen]

Few things are more "BS" than power requirement ratings on a graphics card. Quality over quantity. Many companies will say "it needs 700 watts" just to ensure that it actually gets 200 or something, as many "700 watt" power supplies are so cheap they can't really put out anywhere near that on a consistent basis---and so if you have a really cheap power supply, you may need one rated 700+ watts to power a card that actually only would suck up 200 watts at 100% usage and would usually idle at like 20... (then you get into amperage on a single rail, etc). Again, quality over quantity. A high-quality 500w unit is so much better than a cheap 800w unit.

Go find some reviews that measure the ACTUAL power consumed by the card, and use that for your basis/calculations.

[azrael]

I'd like to keep it under $85.00 or so. Though my PC has an ATI in it, I've usually been a Nvidia fan myself.

At that price range, without deals, coupons, or "garage"/ebay/craigslist-type sales, you'll probably do no better than a Geforce GT 430/440. On the ATI side of things, a Radeon 5670 is the highest in that price range. Most cards in that price range are not the power hungry cards that the higher-end siblings are so you will not have to worry about needing more power.

[mikeszekely]

While I am traditionally an Nvidia fan and have only ever had their stuff, lately I've been thinking ATI for when I upgrade.

Every card I've ever bought has been an Nvidia, and even I'm looking at ATI's cards these days. The Radeons have been outperforming at pretty much every price range these days.

[505thAirborne]

At that price range, without deals, coupons, or "garage"/ebay/craigslist-type sales, you'll probably do no better than a Geforce GT 430/440. On the ATI side of things, a Radeon 5670 is the highest in that price range. Most cards in that price range are not the power hungry cards that the higher-end siblings are so you will not have to worry about needing more power.

Thanks azrael, I'll see if one of the stores in town has a Radeon 5670 instock and if not I'll have to order online. So far so good since I updated my drivers, But I think a new graphics card would be a big improvement.

[David Hingtgen]

Thought I just had: Say you have a $150 budget. Would it generally be better to get the newest "cheaper" card that isn't very high-end to start with and was $150 the day it came out, or to get an older card that was much more powerful in its day (possibly top of the line), but has now fallen down to $150 due to age.

[Dangaioh]

Thought I just had: Say you have a $150 budget. Would it generally be better to get the newest "cheaper" card that isn't very high-end to start with and was $150 the day it came out, or to get an older card that was much more powerful in its day (possibly top of the line), but has now fallen down to $150 due to age.

Presuming that said person is sticking with Nvidia, here's a comparison chart to look at: http://www.nvidia.co...ds_buy_now.html.

Some of the old stuff (400 series) of nvidia, is still not bad. I purchased a Nvidia 460GT last year. I am quite pleased at the price and performance at the day I purchased it.

And yes, I went and purchased the 4600TI, when it first came out... the best $300.00 that I ever spent.

Edited April 5, 2011 by Dangaioh

[mikeszekely]

Thought I just had: Say you have a $150 budget. Would it generally be better to get the newest "cheaper" card that isn't very high-end to start with and was $150 the day it came out, or to get an older card that was much more powerful in its day (possibly top of the line), but has now fallen down to $150 due to age.

I'd assume it'd depend on the cards in question. But, for example, look at the GTX 4xx series vs. the GTX 5xx series. The GTX 480 was powerful but expensive, and the GTX 460 was hailed as a great compromise between price and performance. The GTX 580 is the budget-buster designed to replace the 480, and the 560 the more affordable replacement to the 460. According to Techspot's Crysis 2 performance tests, the 480 averages a few more frames than the 560 (about 5fps at 1680x1050, Extreme settings). But the 480 still retails for over $400, and the 560 can be had for under $250. So let's say you go back a little further, to Nvidia's previous king of the hill, the GTX 285. They're a little harder to find, but I turned up a couple under $200 on eBay. But before we go thinking that we've found ourselves a bargain, going back to the previous reference we see that the GTX 285 barely beat the 460, and is handily trounced by the 560.

[David Hingtgen]

Anyone else getting a lot of Avast warnings this afternoon? I am getting a zillion HTML:Script-inf warnings (mostly from forums) ever since the last auto-update. It even says my ISP's email site has it. (which really sucks, as I'm not going to type in my password until I'm sure it's clean) Couple of wikis, too. I'm betting Avast screwed something up, more than a bunch of places got infected with something all of a sudden. But, with the massive SQL-injection that happened recently, it could actually be a bunch of sites got hit.

You know, Avast has been making me more and more irritated lately. Anyone have suggestions? I used AVG years ago but found Avast was better. May go back to them.

::edit:: Non-working link to one of the sites I went to---Gundam Wiki: hxxp://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/MS-06RD-4_Zaku_II_Prototype

[eugimon]

nope, I run avast as well and haven't seen any unusual activity

[David Hingtgen]

Twitter's gone nuts about it. Avast just blocked Wikipedia itself from me...

[eugimon]

Twitter's gone nuts about it. Avast just blocked Wikipedia itself from me...

nope, still fine, do you use openDNS or your ISP's?

[azrael]

Twitter's gone nuts about it. Avast just blocked Wikipedia itself from me...

Looks like a bad database update. As stupid as it may be, you'll probably have to turn off Avast's Web Shield till they release a corrected update later today.

[David Hingtgen]

Just updated itself a minute ago. See how it does.

eugimon--how often do you auto-update? If you have it to like every 6 hours or something, maybe you haven't gotten it yet, and you'll just skip over it to the newest one.

[eugimon]

Just updated itself a minute ago. See how it does.

eugimon--how often do you auto-update? If you have it to like every 6 hours or something, maybe you haven't gotten it yet, and you'll just skip over it to the newest one.

last update was at 4/11/11 @ 12:36am with a failed attempt at 9:28am, so maybe that was the bad update?

[David Hingtgen]

Possibly. It started acting up after noon and my PC wasn't on this morning.

[BeyondTheGrave]

Picked up the droid x. Liking it so far any recommendations for apps?

[Chewie]

Picked up the droid x. Liking it so far any recommendations for apps?

Games, fun or productivity or a little bit of everything?

[shiroikaze]

I think Amazon has couple of free apps, I don't know if Angry Birds is still free.

What's so great about Angry Birds anyway?

[areaseven]

Woohoo! The greatest computer system of the '80s is back!

The New Commodore 64

[myk]

Lol. I wonder if anyone makes or is planning retro 'cell phones. I'd love to walk around with a shoe box Zach Morris phone...

[mikeszekely]

Picked up the droid x. Liking it so far any recommendations for apps?

Do you read? Aldiko (an ebook reader) and Seesmic (a Twitter app) are probably the two apps I use the most.

Game-wise, there's a G1 Transformers game that I like (mostly because its G1 Transformers). Zenonia is pretty cool too.

[Roy Focker]

Okay. I upgraded to IE 9. Everything layed out differently. I kinda like the old layout. My favorites was on the left of the screen now it is on the right. Can I move it back?

[Dangaioh]

Okay. I upgraded to IE 9. Everything layed out differently. I kinda like the old layout. My favorites was on the left of the screen now it is on the right. Can I move it back?

Yes you can, click the favorites icon, next to the home page, then click the green arrow. See attached. Though, you may have to do this everytime you close the favorites bar.

[TehPW]

Question: this email address ikido55@aol.com used to be on my contacts as a actual person. sometime last year, the email account started spamming me. Now i had learned that someone stopped using it, possibly lossing access to it. So i Sweeped it (my email is provided by Hotmail), placing it on my blocked list. now reading the details says it automatically deletes emails after its placed on the block list. now it does work, 99.9% of the time as i never see the same email spamm address twice... except ikido55@aol.com . how is this one email account able to consistantly appear in the junk folder, when others get blocked successfully?

[mikeszekely]

Does anyone know of any custom/open firmwares that work on older Netgear routers? I've got an ancient MR814v2 wireless B router laying around that I'd replaced with a newer Netgear WNR3500L. My plan was to throw a custom firmware like DD-WRT onto the older router and set it up as a wireless bridge for those rare occasions when I want to move my 360 out of the entertainment center and into the bedroom, but it's not listed as a compatible model.

EDIT: Nevermind. Hooking up the router to mess with the Netgear firmware's settings reminded me why I replaced it in the first place. I could log into it, but it would hang and stop responding instead of saving any changes I made. Can't complain, since it lasted from the time I first got cable internet until late 2010 (maybe 7 years, give or take), but I don't think it's going to work for re-purposing. I'll probably just take it to Staples and have them recycle it.

Edited April 28, 2011 by mikeszekely

[Dangaioh]

Well, solved my browser crashing issue... I just uninstalled Nvidia's Network Manager.

Happily using Firefox, with no crash... whiplash was killing me.

[David Hingtgen]

I like Nvidia less and less all the time. My next graphics card will almost certainly be ATI. I think the only blue screens this PC has ever gotten have been traced to bad Nvidia drivers etc. Their hardware seems good, I just don't think their software is up to snuff.

[azrael]

Nvidia is taking quite a beating from AMD/ATI and Intel (especially with the release of Sandy Bridge). I was looking at Radeons but opted to get a GTX 570. For my next round of upgrades, I might switch over to ATI. The "bang-for-buck" on ATI cards looks a lot better.

NVIDIA losing ground to AMD and Intel in GPU market share (Engadget.com)

Being "locked out" by Intel hurt them against AMD/ATI in the integrated graphics market. When Nvidia decided to pull out of the chipset market, it hurt their standing. And that recall from a few years back didn't help. Nvidia is making a good move going toward the mobile market while AMD hasn't touched that area yet and that will probably bite them, but Nvidia is losing ground on the in the PC market.

[mikeszekely]

I like Nvidia less and less all the time. My next graphics card will almost certainly be ATI. I think the only blue screens this PC has ever gotten have been traced to bad Nvidia drivers etc. Their hardware seems good, I just don't think their software is up to snuff.

That's funny, I've had almost the opposite experience. I've never had a problem with Nvidia (aside from one driver update that had the card's fans running at full blast all the time). All told, I've had four Nvidia cards over the last eight years in three different computers, plus a laptop with a GTX 260M and a desktop with integrated Nvidia graphics, and I always figured I'd keep buying Nvidia for that reason.

Only thing that's had me tempted to go with an ATI card lately is that they've been consistently offering better performance for less money since about the HD 4000 series. And the one thing that's had me going Nvidia anyway is that ATI's Catalyst software seems like junk. The only time I'd ever used an ATI card was on a computer that didn't have an AGP or PCIe x16 slot, just a lonely PCIe x1. Worked fine with the pnp drivers in Windows Vista and whatever came down through Windows Updates, but when I installed the Catalyst software it reduced my screen's brightness by at least 50%.

[kensei]

The performance of the ATI card that I have (the Radeon HD 6990) absolutely smashes games to pieces. I just have to get eyefinity going on them. I have all of the monitors, its just that I need 2 more active display port adapters.

I'm hoping that there is a VGA to mini display port adapter available, as I want to plug up my TV to it too for the 4th eyefinity monitor. Just mainly for work and displaying a single screen for movies in WMP. My sound for the computer goes out through my video card, so no need for HDMI. But I'm worried that the video quality will suffer if I do. Is that true? I like to play some movies from my computer, like anime, but I like to watch BluRay and DVD stuff from my PS3 (whose sound is connected to the same Z5500 as the computer, but via Optical) because my sound card and CPU fan make so much noise.

[Hiriyu]

For Kensei, the only "problem" that I run into with Eyefinity run through displayport adapters is that gamma/color maps can tend to bounce back and forth between my Windows settings and the ATI driver settings... On my configuration (5870 with 3 dvi monitors), I'm only running one monitor via DP adapter (active), and it is that monitor that shifts gamma depending upon which profile I have selected. With enough fiddling, I'm sure I could match my Windows and Catalyst color profiles to where there would be no difference on mode shift, but I'm too lazy to do that when the profiles are just two clicks away anyhow.

Grats on the 6990. I've been wanting to use that card in my pending upgrade/rebuild, but have been slacking on pulling the trigger. I haven't really seen much data on how well it works with Eyefinity; hopefully you can be my test-mule on that

*edit, don't think you'll see any overall quality loss on any monitors going from displayport on the card to HDMI or DVI, just color profile differences. Or, such is my experience.

Edited May 11, 2011 by Hiriyu