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So when I'm playing WoW I sometimes get these green lines that appear over the game that fucks up all the textures and video. When I exit out to Windows it sometimes is there too and I dont know what to do about it. I have the latest ATI drivers installed so what else can it be? I have an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro.
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Oct 10, 2006 17:32
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rndm posted:So when I'm playing WoW I sometimes get these green lines that appear over the game that fucks up all the textures and video. When I exit out to Windows it sometimes is there too and I dont know what to do about it. I have the latest ATI drivers installed so what else can it be? Check to make sure your card isn't overheating. Clean the heatsink of any dust and make sure the fan is spinning properly.
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Oct 10, 2006 17:36
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I have an NVIDIA graphics card that I'd like to put into a new motherboard. Can I put this PCI Express NVIDIA card into a board that's Crossfire-compatible? Obviously, NVIDIA isn't Crossfire, but if I just want to put one graphics card into a motherboard, can this work?
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Oct 11, 2006 03:33
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Pumpy Tudors posted:I have an NVIDIA graphics card that I'd like to put into a new motherboard. Can I put this PCI Express NVIDIA card into a board that's Crossfire-compatible? Obviously, NVIDIA isn't Crossfire, but if I just want to put one graphics card into a motherboard, can this work? A single NVIDIA card will work just fine in a Crossfire board.
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Oct 11, 2006 06:43
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Is it true that having a PCI soundcard ( as opposed to using onboard sound ) will give a minor boost to system performance since it offloads all the audio work?
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Oct 11, 2006 09:13
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I have 2 250gb IDE hard drives (along with an optical drive). I am acquiring 2 250gb SATA hard drives soon. Can I use all of the drives with no problems (non-raid)? I assume that there will be no problem because they're on seperate controllers, but I just wanted to ask to be sure.
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Oct 12, 2006 19:52
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I believe you should. If you have the controllers there, you can use them.
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Oct 12, 2006 20:01
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Ravarek posted:Is it true that having a PCI soundcard ( as opposed to using onboard sound ) will give a minor boost to system performance since it offloads all the audio work? While this may have been true several years ago, audio really doesn't cause that much of a performance drop on modern processors. Vista will also help eliminate this concern as I believe they are getting rid of Direct Sound 3D acceleration, so it will all be done in software anyway. Edit: Here's a post by a Creative rep over on their forums regarding the changes in Vista. As expected, they're trying to get developers to use OpenAL so they still have a market  :http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=Vista&message.id=1694 Star War Sex Parrot fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Oct 12, 2006 |
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Oct 12, 2006 20:33
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I have a FPCCD19 External CD Drive with my Fujitsu Lifebook B Series (2620) laptop. I have a USB bootable Floppy drive, and I was wondering how I would get either the CD drive to boot, or get it to boot through the DOS drivers I have using a Floppy disk. It pains me that I cannot flatten and reinstall rather than upgrade from 2000, and I would like to be able to run Linux on this thing.
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Oct 12, 2006 21:06
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Tracer Tong posted:I have a FPCCD19 External CD Drive with my Fujitsu Lifebook B Series (2620) laptop. I have a USB bootable Floppy drive, and I was wondering how I would get either the CD drive to boot, or get it to boot through the DOS drivers I have using a Floppy disk. See if there's an updated BIOS for your unit to allow booting from external USB devices. Otherwise, you'll have to boot off of a USB enabled floppy boot disk and then run whatever install you need off of the CD.
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Oct 12, 2006 21:11
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strwrsxprt posted:See if there's an updated BIOS for your unit to allow booting from external USB devices. Otherwise, you'll have to boot off of a USB enabled floppy boot disk and then run whatever install you need off of the CD. Apparently there IS no update for the BIOS, as I cannot find one mention of anything regarding this anywhere. I think the problem is that it is not "detected" in BIOS since it does not power up until Windows begins to load (and this was before and after drivers were found and installed for it). Hell, if I could mount it via a linux or 98 floppy I could be fine with that - but the '98 disk won't work by itself (doesnt detect it) and I have some problem gettig a copy of LOAF or similar disks at all. I'm at work, so this might be causing some of these prolems (finding things) but I'm almost completely at a loss as to why I bought this drive that supposedly boots). Tracer Tong fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Oct 12, 2006 |
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Oct 12, 2006 21:15
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Can most USB thumbdrives transfer files between macs and PCs? Can using it for spyware removal infect the thumbdrive?
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Oct 13, 2006 02:39
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I just built a new HTPC, and this time around was thinking of getting a TV tuner card to use in conjunction with MediaPortal. However I keep reading that if you want to record any of the digital channels (not neccessarily HDTV) then you need a digital TV tuner card. Is this correct? If so, can anyone give names of some popular cards? According to this list on MediaPortal there are only a handful of cards that are supported, which is odd. Do most people just use the analog cards?
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Oct 13, 2006 02:44
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baptism of fiber posted:Can most USB thumbdrives transfer files between macs and PCs? Can using it for spyware removal infect the thumbdrive? Most thumbdrives are formatted with the FAT or FAT32 filesystems, which is as close to universal as you'll get in the computing world. Neither Macs nor modern PCs use it natively, but pretty much everything understands it. If you've got a system which understands the USB Mass Storage Device spec, then it will almost certainly be able to read a normal USB thumbdrive. Spyware doesn't really infect things like the viruses of yore; generally, to be infected with spyware you must run one specific executable or ActiveX control. As long as you're dealing with spyware rather than "real" viruses, then there's no worry about infecting media. Even then, pretty much every virus and worm in the wild today infects via the network, as opposed to spreading itself into executable files. However, because of the (small) possibility that there might indeed be a file-infecting virus in addition to spyware, I'd just use a flashdrive with a write-protect function. Considering that there's no premium for a write-protectable flash drive, though, I'd go for the cheap insurance. If you don't have a write-protect tab, though, don't sweat it.
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Oct 13, 2006 03:35
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Strict 9 posted:I just built a new HTPC, and this time around was thinking of getting a TV tuner card to use in conjunction with MediaPortal. However I keep reading that if you want to record any of the digital channels (not neccessarily HDTV) then you need a digital TV tuner card. Either that or an analog tuner that supports IR Blaster so you can connect a cable box to the tuner's composite input while allowing the HTPC to control it, but yeah, a digital tuner sounds more graceful and I would go with that, barring any huge price difference and the willingness of the cable company to provide a cable card (aren't they compelled to do this anyway?) Zorilla fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Oct 13, 2006 |
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Oct 13, 2006 04:25
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I have a couple computer cables that I haven't been able to identify a purpose for. The labelling on the cable is YFC USB 2.0 Shielded<28AWG/2C+26AWG/2C> UL CM 75 degrees E164469-F3. On one end it has a standard USB plug like you would plug into your computer, on the other end it has was looks like a standard Ethernet connector but instead of 8 copper connectors it has 10 of them, but fewer actual wires. 
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Oct 21, 2006 03:49
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I have an old computer that I'm thinking of setting up as a fileserver, torrentbox or something. But I think that the fan on the graphics card is about to die soon. It's a LeadTek WinFast 3D S320 II riva TNT2 ultra (couldn't find a link to an "ultra" but here's some "non ultra") and I was wondering if it would be possible to put on a passive heatsink like a zalman zm-nb47j or something similar. Would that be enough to cool the card if the ventilation of the case is good? It's not going to be used for something that demands much of the graphics card. Edit: I have a 700 mhz AMD Athlon Slot A in that computer and the fan is quite noisy. I've been thinking of replacing it with a new, more silent, fan but would it be possible to just remove that fan and just let it also be cooled by just passive cooling? MadlabsRobot fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Oct 22, 2006 |
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Oct 22, 2006 22:43
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Okay, here's my question: I am looking to add a second monitor to my desktop so I can multitask, specifically, with the upcoming Nintendo Wii (or Playstation2, etc) on the new monitor and have the other have my applications/games/chat clients/etc displayed. This is the monitor I want to buy: http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=320-4688 I am assuming I will be able to plug in the video cable from my Wii into the monitor and then run an extension cable from the Wii to my sound card on my computer for it to work. Is this possible?
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Oct 22, 2006 23:36
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I have 2 SATA seagate hard drives and an ASUS A8N-E motherboard (nforce4) Recently I formatted windows since it kept on crashing and I didn't know why. When I restarted my PC, it never got past the screen with the windows logo. After a format I install all the drivers and update the bios with ASUS update and it still does this. However when I unplug my 2nd hard drive, my PC works normally and doesn't crash at all. Is there a problem with my hard drive or is it driver related? I've heared a lot of complaints about nforce 4 so that might be the root of my problem.
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Oct 23, 2006 20:02
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Null1fy posted:I am assuming I will be able to plug in the video cable from my Wii into the monitor and then run an extension cable from the Wii to my sound card on my computer for it to work. Yes, you can use an ordinary composite or S-Video connection to plug your Wii into the 2007WFP just fine. Although, I imagine the Wii will come with RCA stereo outputs and most sound cards will only accept a stereo-mini auxilary input. You'll want to get an adapter that will convert the two. Xanar posted:Is there a problem with my hard drive or is it driver related? I've heared a lot of complaints about nforce 4 so that might be the root of my problem. Repost this in the HOTS subforum, but include a bit more info such as what you mean by "Never got past the screen." Did it freeze? End at a black screen? Did the hard drive light stay on? All that jazz.
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Oct 23, 2006 20:18
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strwrsxprt posted:Check to make sure your card isn't overheating. Clean the heatsink of any dust and make sure the fan is spinning properly. Quoted for truth, my R9800 fan was nearly seized up because the bearings were not lubricated at all. Removed and cleaned HSF and cpu die, applied good thermal paste, put one or two drops of lube in bearings and its worked fine since. Edit: I have a question of my own. I have a sapphire x1900xt with a large cooling block that covers both the gpu core and ram. I purchased a regular Zalman VGA cooler, would it be advisable to replace the beast of a cooler with the Zalman, or would it be more hassle than its worth, considering I'm probably going to sell it in a few months anyway. Acid rain fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Oct 23, 2006 |
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Oct 23, 2006 21:38
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I just picked up a Zalman heatsink which was on sale and I am currently using the stock AMD heatsink. From the installation video, it looks like I'll have to use the thermal grease that comes with the Zalman heatsink. I noticed that when I installed the stock AMD heatsink, it already came with some thermal grease already on the bottom. Is there any particular way to remove this before applying a new layer of thermal grease? Water doesn't sound like a safe option.
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Oct 28, 2006 21:44
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Xanar posted:I just picked up a Zalman heatsink which was on sale and I am currently using the stock AMD heatsink. I always use something alcohol-based like denatured alcohol and a q-tip and it works great. I think I have also used rubbing alcohol and zippo fluid.
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Oct 28, 2006 22:44
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Heh, I've always used premoistened bathroom wipes to remove thermal pads and it seems to work great, but I wouldn't recommend it as first resort.
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Oct 29, 2006 01:18
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Hi quick RAID question. I'm going to be setting up a RAID for the first time using three pretty nice WD's I just bought. I want to set up a RAID 5, hence the 3 disks. It seems that there are two options for establishing the RAID 5 array: through a GUI in the BIOS and a GUI in Windows. I actually don't know if I should be calling it the BIOS, because I'm not sure if that's how it does it. But anyway, I want to do a fresh install of Windows on the array, so which should I use? Could I set up the array through the Windows GUI and the system will "remember" it, or should I use the BIOS setup. I really have no idea how it works. I'd rather use the Windows GUI because it looks easier, but if that information is lost somehow when I wipe Windows from my existing hard drives and install it on the array, I'll stick with the GUI. Mobo: Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe HDD: 3x WD Caviar 250gb Controller: Silicon RAID SATA [software] controller Any help would be appreciated since I've never done this before. I have all of the software, manuals, and guides I need. I just don't know how, when, or why to distinguish between the Windows and non-Windows interfaces.
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Nov 1, 2006 16:37
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Posted in the sticky laptops threead as well, because I realized that might be the wrong place for this: My Compaq Evo N620C, purchased used, has a rapidly dying battery. It's gone from 3.5 hours at the beginning of the summer to 2.5 hours a month ago to 1.5 hours now. It reports this is 36% of normal capacity.  Do I have any real options here other than shelling out $140 for a replacement? I don't suppose there's any hope of resuscitation somehow... Bonus question! I was running my computer on battery, with at least an hour left. Out of curiosity, I ran a terminal command to use 100% CPU, and Something Bad happened:  What the hell happened? Why would just running a program cause my battery to drain at an insane rate?
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Nov 4, 2006 09:44
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Twinxor posted:My Compaq Evo N620C, purchased used, has a rapidly dying battery. It's gone from 3.5 hours at the beginning of the summer to 2.5 hours a month ago to 1.5 hours now. It reports this is 36% of normal capacity. While a reduction in capacity over time in LiIon batteries is epected, that's a huge drop in such a small amount of time. Were the 3.5 hours and 1.5 hours under the same usage conditions? EDIT: The CPU uses a lot more power at load, so that's expected. The "% remaining" figure is generally based off of terminal voltage and in some cases stored battery history, so it's not 100% linear or accurate.
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Nov 4, 2006 18:09
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Twinxor posted:
Laptop CPUs have numerous low power states that they use to reduce the power that they consume. These are not the same as system power states (Suspend/Hibernate/Soft-off) which are user requested. C-states are transparent to the user. Entry to these states is controlled by the kernel's idle thread. So you have a task running that keeps burning up CPU cycles you will never go into a lower power state. Additionally, entry to lower power states can be blocked by bus master cycles to cacheable memory caused by other DMA engines on the system (e.g. an EHCI fetching it's transfer queue). More recent cpus can dynamically vary their core frequency, front-side bus frequency, and voltage. Again, this is typically controlled by the operating system based on the time spent in it's idle thread.
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Nov 4, 2006 19:07
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E: not really hardware question. ignore.
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Nov 4, 2006 19:14
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I want to hook up my DirectTV satellite receiver to my PC for viewing in my room. What PCI card is best? I've already read recommendations for the WinTV-PVR-150 MCE by Hauppage, but it appears the newegg listing is a newer model without the remote control. Is this still the best bet? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815116631
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Nov 5, 2006 05:00
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I've been out of the PC building game for so long now I have no idea what goes into what and for what. If I want to watch HDTV on my computer, what would be necessary? What sort of components would I need on my monitor/video card? I'm guessing DVI or something is required on the video card, but what does that plug into? Do I need a TV tuner as well? I'm so lost.
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Nov 6, 2006 00:52
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I had a quick question about external HDDs. I am currently using the Vantec Nextstar external enclosures, which can get pretty hot depending on how much I'm accessing the drive. Do most people keep external drives on all the time? I don't want to do any perm. damage or lessen the life of my hard drive by keeping the power on all the time. Also does anyone recommend a nice external HD (sata) enclosure? Thanks.
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Nov 8, 2006 21:14
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atlas of bugs posted:I've been out of the PC building game for so long now I have no idea what goes into what and for what. If I want to watch HDTV on my computer, what would be necessary? What sort of components would I need on my monitor/video card? I'm guessing DVI or something is required on the video card, but what does that plug into? Do I need a TV tuner as well? I'm so lost. Sadly, this is probably a bad idea. You'll need a capture card to get the video into the computer, and I believe all new capture flags will look for and obey the broadcast flag. So unless you want to randomly lose yoru ability to watch televsion, it's probably not a great way to go. If you can get an older capture card, though, it should work great. If you're using a seperate capture card, the video card you use is pretty irrelevant, so if you're not gaming just use whatever's cheapest (probably just onboard video). The monitor connection also doesn't really matter, although if you're using an LCD a DVI conenction will give you slightly better quality than VGA. If you want to watch HD-DVDs or Blu-ray at full resolution, you'll (maybe, not everyone is using ICT) need a video card and monitor that support HDCP. As far as I know, none of the former actually exist, so good luck with that. See, the great thing about DRM is how it will enable hollywood to easily give us the content we want at reasonable prices!
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Nov 8, 2006 21:28
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SecretFire posted:While a reduction in capacity over time in LiIon batteries is epected, that's a huge drop in such a small amount of time. Were the 3.5 hours and 1.5 hours under the same usage conditions? Yeah, I've been really surprised at that aspect. I've only been using a power cycle a day or so, so it was strange to see it drop off that fast.
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Nov 8, 2006 21:45
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Null1fy posted:Okay, here's my question: I am looking to add a second monitor to my desktop so I can multitask, specifically, with the upcoming Nintendo Wii (or Playstation2, etc) on the new monitor and have the other have my applications/games/chat clients/etc displayed. I did this at home, and it works perfectly (albeit with only one monitor). You may have to get an adapter for the audio cables if your sound card doesn't have the proper jacks. Here's how I have mine set up: My monitor has the computer plugged in through the VGA jack, and the game console is hooked in through the s-video port(I switch between the two with the monitor's remote control). Then I have the 2 audio plugs from the video game console plugged into a stereo RCA jack->1/8" audio jack, and that's plugged into an audio cable extension cord which plugs into the line-in jack of the computer.
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Nov 9, 2006 00:45
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Edit: I'm too stupid to have an account sometimes, figured it out.
mailmanrob fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Nov 9, 2006 |
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Nov 9, 2006 03:57
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Pertinent information: dell inspiron 9300 (still), ATI radeon mobility X300, 2g RAM. I recently modified my setup. I keep the laptop screen closed and run DVI and VGA cables out of my laptop to two 19'' LCDs. Warcraft on the left, browsing/movies/etc on the right. I keep my laptop well cooled and I figured 2G of RAM would be enough to handle it all. I've never suffered any performance issues. But as of a few days ago while playing WoW, this would happen: everything pauses for 3-5 seconds, completely unresponse - then both screens go black for another 3-5 seconds (sound works throughout this) and then everything comes back like it never happened. Then yesterday it happened with greater frequency. Finally, it happened and everything restored except for the WoW window. The game still took commands and played sound, but the window was all black. After I closed WoW and restarted it, I got a system error that wouldn't allow me to continue. After this, my display became very jerky - scrolling on websites with jittery instead of fluid, etc. Everything worked fine again after a restart. Then the same black-outs occurred with greater frequency, and then WoW died again. Is my video card just incapable of this two-monitor setup, I asked myself. Well, I cut it down to one monitor, even updated my omega radeon drivers, even switched back to old fashioned catalyst drivers, nothing. Same blackouts followed by wow dying. I'd like to find the cause of the error so I at least know if I can expect to play WoW again after reinstalling windows. Is my video card crippled?
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Nov 13, 2006 19:48
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Zeris posted:Is my video card crippled? I'd try the standard tests. Run prime95 for at least a few hours to make sure there's no CPU overheating/errors. It probably wouldn't hurt either to give your RAM a check with memtest86+. Lastly, try using ATItool's artifacts tester to stress your GPU for a while and see if you have any errors or crashes like in WoW.
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Nov 13, 2006 20:20
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I am looking for a printer/hardware capable of printing 3'' X 5'' size postcards of card stock weight in volume. We want this device to accept as input our address, the recipient address (recipient specific) and some additional info (recipient specific) and the card stock media (which is also shiny/glossy). The output should be the finished postcard, with all the information in it. Do you guys have any suggestions?
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Nov 16, 2006 23:57
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So, I finally decided to upgrade my cheap old processor, mobo, and ram. I didn't want to blow more money on a video card right away, however, so I decided to get the ASRock mobo with both AGP and PCI-E. That way I could keep the "old" X800 Pro, but keep my options open when I finally did want a new PCI-E card. The problem comes in because I stupidly bought the ultrafast DDR2-800 RAM, but upon checking the mobo after I placed the order I see it only supports up to DDR2-667.  Now I have a great mobo and great RAM, but am hesitant to combine the two. My question is this: Am I completely screwed, or will the mobo, fancy as it is, throttle the speed of the RAM down and only use it at 667Mhz? Links to the purchase pages are here: ASRock 775DUAL-VSTA OCZ Gold XTC PC2-6400 (I don't use NewEgg because I live in Canada  )
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Nov 22, 2006 07:50
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