Rollcall: who is running what?

[LiamC]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that the reason I went GigaByte is that the team here seem to rate the 'boards. Thanks people. This really is a helpful forum.

 

[Santilli]

Well, kept me posted. It's going to be quite awhile before I upgrade the processor, or put together another computer. So, by the time I feel like going dual, they should have another bios, or perfected the older ones....

s

 

[Santilli]

Well, kept me posted. It's going to be quite awhile before I upgrade the processor, or put together another computer. So, by the time I feel like going dual, they should have another bios, or perfected the older ones....

Not to mention, it's great to know that down the road, I can go to the X2 processors...

s

 

[CougTek]

Liam: isn't the Gigabyte K8NS Ultra-939 a single processor only board, with
Nvidia 3 chipset?

P.S. Call me Bill

Thanks Liam.

 

[Handruin]

:rotfl:

 

[Santilli]

BILL :excl: :mrgrn:

 

[Platform]

P.S. Call me Bill

Thanks William.

 

[Tannin]

 

[LiamC]

:rofl:

For the Black Eyed Peas fans, how about Will I Am?

http://pub.tv2.no/multimedia/TV2/archive/00160/ap_fergie_160730a.jpg

 

[Fushigi]

Why I like running iSeries (AS/400) systems. They can take the abuse. IBM even tells some stories.

 

[paugie]

Here's what I have. It's only 1 machine. Its legacy goes back to 1995 when I first bought an AMD 386DX42 with a 100mb hard disk drive and a glorious 1mb 72-pin memory stick.

Processor - Intel Celeron-D 2.53 (a shame, this, after all my years as an AMD person) 6 months old
Motherboard - Epox 4PLAI Intel 848 chipset - came with the processor
RAM - 2x512mb TwinMos DDR400 - most recent upgrade, 1 months old
Hard Disks - Samsung 80gb, 1 year old, and a Maxtor 80gb, 2.5yrs. old (both are thankfully 7200rpm)
DVD Burner - NEC 3540A, 2 months old
Video Card - 32mb Trident T32 Blade (ultra-crap video, prone to tearing and delays)
Sound Card - Turtle Beach Sta. Cruz, 2 years old
IDE Controller - Promise Ultra66, 3 years old (with me, it was also bought 2nd hand)
Monitor - 17" Mitsubishi Diamondtron RD17GR (bought 2nd hand) 2 years with me
A server casing semi-stolen from a friend, sanded down and re-sprayed, 6 months
350 watt PSU salvaged from some Compaq machine, 1 year

 

[tazwegion]

A server casing semi-stolen from a friend, sanded down and re-sprayed, 6 months

I bet you painted it black (formally beige), so your friend doesn't recognise it anymore :roll: :lol:

Viva La Retro! :aok:

 

[paugie]

hahaha, taz.

Nothing of the kind. I saw it sitting around in my friend's office. I asked about it and he said, we're going to use it in training some street kids how to assemble/disassemble PCs. I said, you're going to give the boys hernias while you're at it. What if I swap a lighter (you bet) casing for it. He agreed so I brought it home.

Now I am in the process of getting a h...

It is still beige. Never was fashionable. Will never be. At 52yrs of age, I don't think that part of me will change. The PC always will.

 

[tazwegion]

Now I am in the process of getting a h...

What a home? c'mon the case is large admitably but NOT big enough to live in!

Hmmmm... looking @ the specs, unless you're an 'Audiophile' wouldn't the on-board sound be good enough? you could swap your AGP blade & Santa Cruz S/card for a nicer flavour of AGP maybe...

*Drools* a nVidia GeForce2?

:jumpin:

 

[Mercutio]

Generally speaking, onboard audio is a really, really bad deal.
It's fine if you just want IE to go "click" when you view a web page, but if you're going to listen to music, it's atrocious.

The main problems are the AC97 specification itself, which among other things requires that all PCM output be upsampled and processed at 48kHz even though 99.9% of everything that's done on a PC is 44kHz - an AC97 sound chip has to mangle everything it plays.

We could also mention the fact that onboard chips are basically surrounded by dozens of sources of EMI. One consequence of this is that onboard audio is usually at least mildly staticky when connected to standard analog speakers. A PCI-based system isn't THAT much better off, but every little bit really does help. The best possible answers are to use USB sound processors or some other digital interconnect from your sound hardware. Most midrange or better motherboards can handle that.

We could also mention crummy DACs, but yeah, that's probably a little too much into audiophile-land.

Regardless, if you're listening to music on a computer, and you spent more than $30 on your computer speakers, you probably can hear a difference between a crappy ALC650 and a nice Via Envy. It does make a difference, even for non-audiophile listeners.

 

[paugie]

Hey! sorry I had 2nd thoughts about mentioning the word "hernia" anyway, the server casing is really heavy, the old steel plate is not like the new ones coming out where you can use the edges of the case to shave your mustache.

And I dread having to do work on the machine's innards. I have to grunt and heave just getting the thing on a work table. Really looks good, though. and just bringing the parts to a larger casing shaved some 3deg Centigrade on the Processor temp.

The Sta. Cruz is not negotiable. I do some video editing on the side and the better S/N ratio is a help.

 

[tazwegion]

Okay... I don't mind my Abit on-board sound, maybe I'm just a little hearing impaired

Oh wait, I am... tone deaf & couldn't hold a note to save myself :lol: perhaps the Juster subwoofer/speaker combo just make it sound good :roll:



Viva La Soundblaster! :aok:

 

[tazwegion]

Hmmmm... how does you 'hernia buster' compare in size to these steel AT server cases? (I've got 4 :lol

Kinda' remind me of highrise accomodation for hamsters LMAO :lol:

 

[CougTek]

At 52yrs of age, I don't think that part of me will change.

With you, Gary, Greg, formerly Flagreen and soon Tony, Buck and Mark in the 50+ club, we'll have to open a new forum : geriatric matters.

;-) Don't take it bad, my hair is halfway grey too.

 

[time]

You have HAIR? Lucky sod.

 

[LiamC]

:lol: At 43, I don't feel so bad now!

 

[paugie]

http://home.ripway.com/2005-5/300796/Folder Name/PhotographyGroup/servercasing.jpg
Well, here is my personal "hernia buster". I suppose they are the same size as those in the picture.

Had to take it down as I am donating the 32mb Trident to a friend who does not have a video card (meaning he has no choice but to take it even though it's not "nice"). Took the picture while it was on top of the work table.

I put in my old Matrox Mystique 4mb PCI until I can afford a 2nd hand GE Force2 MX-400 or better yet an ATI 7000 with passive cooling. The Matrox is still sharp, great text and 2D saturation, but I can't watch DVDs unless it is at the resolution the video was made in. Meaning, about 1/8 of my 17" screen.

About the age, I like to think I am of a better disposition now than when I turned 40. That was the time my kids chanted "40-40-40" whenever I was out of sorts.

If you will notice the little masking tape over the reset button. That's to keep my 1-1/2 year-old grandson from freaking me out. He has a way of sneaking in and pushing it. And I'd go "whaaaa!" when the screen would black out. And I'd see him looking up at me grinning from ear to ear.

Oh I enjoy hijacking threads. LOL

 

[paugie]

oops. Now I know why there's a preview button. Sorry.

 

[Handruin]

I know that case...In-Win Q500. I built a PII 350 with that case and it is still in use today at my parents.

 

[Mercutio]

I have a couple of those sitting at my ex's place. Well built cases, but very loud and heavy.

 

[mubs]

My Antec SX 1030 is made of 1mm steel, and I stuck Dynamat (tar-based sound deadening they put in cars) all over the inside. It really weighs a lot - 50+ pounds. It's very difficult to carry from one room to another. But it's very quiet.

 

[Groltz]

I went and looked on SR to see if my ancient posts about case dynamatting were on there.

Evidently they were pre-crash era.

 

[tazwegion]

If you will notice the little masking tape over the reset button. That's to keep my 1-1/2 year-old grandson from freaking me out. He has a way of sneaking in and pushing it. And I'd go "whaaaa!" when the screen would black out. And I'd see him looking up at me grinning from ear to ear.

LMAO :lol: yes my 2 y.o. went through that stage, still does from time to time, tends to have an addiction to the 'Yahoo IM audibles' now, and will literally takeover the computer :roll:

PC-jacked by a 2 y.o. :lol: they learn fast eh?

BTW nice case... could do with some UV/neon/perspex accessories though!

 

[ddrueding]

My fileserver is now too heavy for one person to safely lift; it's a good thing it's on casters. After adding the last PS and Supermicro enclosure full, it's gotta be over 100lbs (and the case is aluminium)!

 

[MaxBurn]

Server: Intel 2.8C P4, Supermicro P4SCT motherboard (intel i875 with CSA Pro1000 Gigabit LAN and PCI-X), 1Gig DDR PC3200 Corsair Value memory, 480Gig level RAID 5 array and 80Gig RAID 1 array using a 3Ware 7500-8 controller, four Samsung Spinpoint SP1614N for storage and two WD600LB for OS, another WD800JB for video processing. Gigabit Lan courtesy of Intel CSA, an AOPEN AW850 sound card with external Digital in/out for local listening, a Matrox G400 MAXX dual head video card.

Laptop: Dell Latitude D610. Pentium M 2.0/533, 1.5Gig of memory, 7K60 7200RPM hard drive, Raedon X300, SXGA+ screen. This laptop rocks, I wish I was allowed to use it on the job, see below.

Work / Game machine: Coolermaster Wavemaster (ala recycled Compaq X07) case. Pentium 4 3.0HT (overclocked to 3.4), ASUS P4C800-E Delux (again Compaq X07 with ASUS BIOS) motherboard. 1Gig Kingston PC3200 memory, OS resides on a Raptor 74Gig drive, and there is a Seagate SATA2 160Gig drive for storage/workspace. I have a LiteOn SOHD 167T and a Pioneer DVR-108 DVD ± burner to play with movies. Intel Gigabit CSA Pro1000 on board to connect to the LAN. ATI retail Radon 9700Pro video card. HDA Mystique 7.1 (Dolby Live) for sound. This machine runs Windows XP pro. Hauppage PVR250MCE TV tuner. This will soon be driving a projector.

Car MP3 Player: AMD K62 500, ASUS P5A-B motherboard, 192MB memory, 30Gig HD, DVD drive for movies on the go, Aureal Vortex SQ2500 Superquad sound card, ATI Expert at Play Video card, 5.6" LCD monitor, Logitech Trackman Live mouse, numeric keypad for fast access, and Windows 98SE with Winamp. Machine boots under 40 seconds from power on and gives me lots of MP3's for travel listening.

Work laptop is an underpowered Dell C600 PIII700 512MB running Win2000. I hate it, it's falling apart (literally) but the damn thing just won't die and they won't replace it.

Most of this with pictures is on my web page.

 

[Groltz]

The new gaming machine. It's not quite done yet, but almost.

• CASE: Antec P180 -- Stock fans swapped for Yate Loon D12SL-12's -- 100ohm/50watt CPU fan rheostat moved from old case to this one and mounted through back wall -- All case fans mounted in Vantec silica gel vibration damping gaskets
• PS: Seasonic S12-600 -- Custom fan bus made from unused 8-pin dual-CPU connector
  
• MB: MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum (nForce4 Ultra chipset) -- Northbridge HSF thermal tape removed and replaced with Arctic Silver 5
• CPU Heatsink Fan: Temporarily using a Delta 92x25mm Triple Blade EFB0912L. Going to a Delta 92x38mm Triple Blade EFB0912HHE in a couple days (Through the rheostat and turned down to a fairly quiet level)
• CPU Heatsink: Thermalright XP90-C
• CPU: AMD Athlon 64 4800+ X2 - Toledo core -- Running currently at 12 x 220MHz (2640MHz)
• Memory: 2GB (2x1024) OCZ Part# "OCZ5002048ELGE-K" PC-4000 DDR
  
• Video Card: eVGA 7800GTX KO ACS³
  
• FD: Teac
• CD-Rom: Asus 52x QuieTrack
• CD-RW: Yamaha F1
• DVD-RW: Plextor PX-716SA
• HDs: Two Western Digital WD740GD's in RAID 0

Notes:

1) I'm still contemplating which soundcard to get. The newly introduced Creative X-Fi's are starting to garner rave reviews, I hate to say, and I will likely go that route. My second choice would be that punky card that Merc likes.

2) Two Raptors in RAID-0?!? Boo! Hiss! ...Yes, yes I know.
Most of my gaming machines up 'till now have had fast SCSI HDs. Until SAS gets firmly established, however, I'm not going back to them. Once I can get a SAS host adapter card and HD that I like the Raptors go on Ebay.

3) Nvidia video card?!? More boos, more hisses.
I had really hoped the ATI R520's would have been out and available by now. That obviously isn't the case. FWIW I really liked the Sapphire X800XT (AGP) that I had in my old machine. If the R520's ever do make it to market and get some good feedback I'll auction off this portable kiln (145 watt draw at idle/280 watts at full load) and pick one up.

I've got a couple picture sets if anyone wants to see this machine. Both sets contain the same pics. One has medium-res pics; the other is high-res.

PM me if you want the links.

I'll leave the pics up for about a week or so.

Cheers,
-s

 

[CougTek]

I haven't added up the numbers, but that's a freaking expensive box you have there. Lucky for you if you have the earnings to equip yourself like that. I probably could too, but since I don't play much games, except freecell while I run Adaware/NOD32, I have reconsidered my needs toward the bottom for computer stuff.

What's the current best-looking FPS these days? The only game that might tempt me to upgrade my graphics is the upcoming Serious Sam 2.

 

[Groltz]

Well G,

I don't really have the earnings...at least to buy that sort of stuff spontaneously. It's more of a process of saving for a few months and working some overtime to be able to comfortably afford it. My household income is actually about a third of what it used to be due to divorce and a job change.

I still like HL2, Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, and Far Cry.

SS2 looks like it will be a blast. SS's developers (Croteam) are about the best bunch in their league as far as I'm concerned. The game will be another very vividly colored one from what I'm seeing in screenshots.

 

[Mercutio]

1) I'm still contemplating which soundcard to get. The newly introduced Creative X-Fi's are starting to garner rave reviews, I hate to say, and I will likely go that route. My second choice would be that punky card that Merc likes.

Well, I can't help but chime in on this one: the X-Mystique is GREAT for media applications. Jaw-dropping. I own three of them at this point (everywhere I can have surroundsound), and the fact that I was willing to blow $300 on sound cards might be very telling. BUT it probably isn't for you. First, it needs to be connected by a Digital cable to an external surroundsound processor - either a home theater receiver or something like one of those boutique high-end sets of computer speakers.
The other thing is, some of the reviews and comments I've seen suggest that its awesomeness is diminished in certain games; EAX isn't fully supported in certain titles.

That said, I hear Creative Labs makes its sound cards from nuns and baby ducks and the ground-up souls of the victims of 9/11, and if you buy their hardware, the terrorists and republicans have won.

2) Two Raptors in RAID-0?!?

So... there's a good hard drive somewhere in this system that you'll be storing a Ghost image of the your "Recipe for Disaster" on? A Samsung 200GB costs all of $95 and can contain your whole array.

3) Nvidia video card?!? More boos, more hisses.

Actually, in a way, I sympathize.
Only in a way, though, since I'm pretty sure Creative buys its ingredients from nvidia.
If I'm as objective as I can be, the 7800 sounds like it's a far better card than anything ATI has out right now, at least from a performance standpoint. Power consumption and noise though... yikes. The focus of my complaints about nVidia grahics cards has always been that they get way too hot (even in 2D). I don't want to think about how warm this new part is, especially since it's back to having a single slot cooling system.

Current graphics cards are like a whole other reason to overspend on Power Supplies. The requirements are edging into "insane". There's a 600somethingW PSU in my HTserver right now. It's running 12 hard drives and an Athlon64 - a real server-type load. You've got, um, 2 hard disks, 2 CD ROMs, a high-end processor. If you had a normal graphics card, I'd stick in a quality 300 or 350W PSU and call it a day!

Anyway, I've been toying with buying a couple more Socket 939 machines, maybe something in a dual core - I really like my Soltek K890Pro-939s with all those yummy SATA ports on 'em... but every time I look down that path, I get annoyed with the state of midrange ATI graphics cards.
For $120 I can buy an X700. For $140 I can get an X800. For $170 I can get an X800GT (and I'm not quite sure what the difference is...). $200 is my cutoff for a midrange card. I won't spend more money than that.

Thing is, am I ever going to be able to tell the difference between any of the above? Ever? I can tell the difference between a 9600Pro and a 9800Pro in Doom 3. Fine. I have an X700 now, and an X800 and unless I bump my screen resolution to a setting I'd never normally use... they're exactly the same as far as I can tell (Doom 3 would be way cooler as a subjective test if every damned thing in the whole game wasn't $#%#% black)

It sounds like I'll be OK with the X700, but there it is - the X800 is only a few dollars more! Arg! Why give us that choice?

 

[Mercutio]

I don't know if I've said this before, but I'm really, really happy with Soltek's Via based Athlon64 boards. I bought a couple socket 939 models, with 4 SATA ports, three IDE ports and gigabit suport, and I have appreciated that degree of expandability.

Turns out, Soltek's Socket 754 version of the same board has the same features. Gigabit, extra SATA and PATA ports, as the 939 models. Most Via-based Socket 754 boards are really light on features; I didn't read specs closely and just bought Soltek 'cause I couldn't get Gigabyte.

You guys who are thinking doing the athlon64 thing, Soltek's Via stuff is worth keeping in mind.

 

[Groltz]

#2 Machine (Teh ShoEb0xx)

Shuttle SN25P
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
1024MB Mushkin Level 2 PC 3500 DDR (Out of old rig)
Western Digital WD740GD (Out of old rig)
Benq DW1640 DVD-RW
Teac FD
Asus AX550GE/TD PCI-E video card (ATI Radeon X550 Chipset) (Passively Cooled)
(No LED's)

The vertical light-colored blemish next to the power button is just a reflection.

I have two better pictures of it if anyone wants to see them...Just PM me for the link to the RAR file.

 

[Handruin]

That's a kicking machine for its size. So you own two x2 4800+'s?!? :eekers:

gadamn :drinka:

 

[Groltz]

I've worked some brutal overtime through the last 2 months. :bleh:

Thought a second machine could come in handy...and it already has.

 

[CougTek]

My P4 2.66GHz is looking more and more pathetic (it already was on the day I bought it). BTW, that POS P4 is slower than my old Athlon XP 1800+ at stock frequency according to 3D Mark 2003. With the same Radeon 9550, it scores 200 points lower than the 1.1GHz slower Athlon XP (2550 vs 2760 before). Amazing.

 

[Mercutio]

I just found out that Sempron 3400s are in fact 64-bit chips with full support for Athlon64-ish goodness like Quiet n' Cool and SSE3.

Pretty good deal for a chip that's $30 cheaper than an A64/3000.