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Topic: Quick [tech] Questions Thread (Read 1207606 times)
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NiX
Wiki Admin
Posts: 7770
Locomotive Pandamonium
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What's the problem? I would blame the video card first.
It's hard to say. No one really knows the exact problem, but from what I can gather there's a feature in the P5Q mobo that drops the voltage on the video card slowly causing it to kill itself. A very detailed explanation from one person here. Some people say turning off half the energy saving/performance features fixes it, but it's brutal having to reboot and wait for the system to lock up again. It took about an hour last time. The problem being is that one guy reported his video card breaking from the voltage issue, so I don't know if mine is broken or if it's fine and I can keep trying all the bios option fixes. Edit: Probably the video card. Problem is, even if I do RMA the card, they're only going to send me another one that won't work.
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« Last Edit: January 24, 2009, 10:00:49 PM by NiX »
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Salamok
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2803
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What's the longest DVI or VGA monitor cable I can get? Ideally it's like 10-12'.
I have used a 50' VGA for a projector, worked great but being a projector the resolution wasn't all that high (1024x768)
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Grimwell
Developers
Posts: 752
[Redacted]
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You have $200. You want to buy an ATX motherboard that is SLI friendly. The computer this board will support exists only to game. What do you buy?
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Grimwell
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23627
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You have $200. You want to buy an ATX motherboard that is SLI friendly. The computer this board will support exists only to game. What do you buy?
Just to be clear do you want SLI (NVIDIA) or Crossfire (AMD/ATI) support?
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60345
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You have $200. You want to buy an ATX motherboard that is SLI friendly. The computer this board will support exists only to game. What do you buy?
Just to be clear do you want SLI (NVIDIA) or Crossfire (AMD/ATI) support?
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23627
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"SLI" is used by many people as a generic term for multiple cards.
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60345
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I suppose maybe!
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23627
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Well you probably weren't old enough to remember the Voodoo SLI setup
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60345
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Well you probably weren't old enough to remember the Voodoo SLI setup Pfffffffffffft. I had SLI'd modems. It works for everything in pairs, rite?
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Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
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Did a bunch of poking around this morning. It appears the front jacks are not connected (looks like they never were, which I guess makes sense). The onboard card also doesn't work, so I'm guessing it was turned off at assembly (iBuyPower). That onboard card does have the standard red port that Engels talked about though. It's just an X-Fi Audio card, no special pre-/suffixes like Fatal1ty nor Extremewhatver. I downloaded your OpenAL driver and installed it. I don't know if that's the exact thing that fixed the mic, but plugging the microphone wire into the optical/mic port works. I still can't get the Audio Console to switch from Audio Creation to Entertainment nor Gaming modes, but honestly I don't care. My computer is in the living room and I'm using just-ok headphones so I can still talk with the wife when gaming anyway. I'll get fidelity someday when I build my game room in the basement Question: if my onboard sound has been disabled (presumably to prevent it conflicting with the X-Fi), how do I turn it back on? I poked around the BIOS but nothing jumped out at me. The X-Fi optical/mic port pulls double duty. I downloaded you
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Lantyssa
Terracotta Army
Posts: 20848
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Options like that should be in the BIOS, but it might be hidden in a sub-menu. It's also possible the board is smart enough to automatically disable it because you have the X-Fi card installed. On board sound doesn't tend to work if you have a card as well.
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Hahahaha! I'm really good at this!
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Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
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Ok I'll look in the BIOS again. When I pulled the X-fi out, Vista didn't see a sound capability at all.
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Strazos
Greetings from the Slave Coast
Posts: 15542
The World's Worst Game: Curry or Covid
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Using Firefox 2.0.0.20
For some reason, a while ago my download manager stopped working. I can open it, but anything I download is done "in the background."
Also, I can't save pictures through the browser. As in, when I right-click and go through the dialog of picking a place and naming and saving the file, it does not work. I can open up an old version of IE that I never use and save just fine.
virus/spyware scans turn up nothing.
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Fear the Backstab! "Plato said the virtuous man is at all times ready for a grammar snake attack." - we are lesion "Hell is other people." -Sartre
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Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
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Have you considered going to Firefox 3? 2.0.0.20 is pretty old
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Strazos
Greetings from the Slave Coast
Posts: 15542
The World's Worst Game: Curry or Covid
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Yeah, but there was talk awhile ago that Ff 3 sucks ass. Has this changed - is the browser acceptable and such now?
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Fear the Backstab! "Plato said the virtuous man is at all times ready for a grammar snake attack." - we are lesion "Hell is other people." -Sartre
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Engels
Terracotta Army
Posts: 9029
inflicts shingles.
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Just test it out. If it 'sucks ass' (although I can't see how a mozilla browser can illicit such scathing criticism. Safari, sure, but Mozilla?), uninstall it and reinstall 2, which you can probably find somewhere on the FF site, if nto elsewhere (Twocows prolly still hosts a copy).
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I should get back to nature, too. You know, like going to a shop for groceries instead of the computer. Maybe a condo in the woods that doesn't even have a health club or restaurant attached. Buy a car with only two cup holders or something. -Signe
I LIKE being bounced around by Tonkors. - Lantyssa
Babies shooting themselves in the head is the state bird of West Virginia. - schild
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23627
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Yeah, but there was talk awhile ago that Ff 3 sucks ass. Has this changed - is the browser acceptable and such now?
Who said FF3 sucks ass? The memory management in FF3 is much better than that bloated POS FF2. Also FF2 is no longer supported (December 2008 was the last month) so if any security issues come up on FF2 you are on your own.
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Strazos
Greetings from the Slave Coast
Posts: 15542
The World's Worst Game: Curry or Covid
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People here were complaining about it when it first hit, so I stayed away. I guess I'll give it a shot myself.
EDIT: Not surprisingly, upgrading to the newest version fixed the problem.
One annoyance though - every time I download something, it's immediately scanned....any way to turn this off, or at least set exceptions?
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« Last Edit: January 25, 2009, 06:38:55 PM by Strazos »
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Fear the Backstab! "Plato said the virtuous man is at all times ready for a grammar snake attack." - we are lesion "Hell is other people." -Sartre
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Grimwell
Developers
Posts: 752
[Redacted]
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You have $200. You want to buy an ATX motherboard that is SLI friendly. The computer this board will support exists only to game. What do you buy?
Just to be clear do you want SLI (NVIDIA) or Crossfire (AMD/ATI) support? Sorry for the delayed response. I want SLI = nVidia. It's a personal thing, but I prefer their cards.
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Grimwell
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Grimwell
Developers
Posts: 752
[Redacted]
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Grimwell
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Yegolev
Moderator
Posts: 24440
2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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One annoyance though - every time I download something, it's immediately scanned....any way to turn this off, or at least set exceptions?
What is doing the scanning?
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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rattran
Moderator
Posts: 4257
Unreasonable
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I wasn't happy with the mcp/mosfet/etc cooler on that board, it's one big, long set of heatsinks/pipes, and if you install the (needed) fan, it defaults to blowing the heat from the mcp directly on the back of the primary video card. And evga's response to me was to suggest I lap the bottom of the heatsink system, and bend it until it fit better, while cautioning that it may void the warranty. Would have been workable, but I was annoyed enough to go for an DFI x38 board instead.
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Grimwell
Developers
Posts: 752
[Redacted]
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You wouldn't happen to have a link to the DFI x38 board you went with would you?
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Grimwell
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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I also get three options for sound in WoW: System Default, Regular Speakers (X-fi), SPDIF Out (X-fi). I have no idea what that third one is.
Probably for someone like me running to a home theater, it's a digital out. Unfortunately, on the X-Fi, you can't get surround sound on the spdif out, you've got to pony up for their breakout box. Speaking of the X-Fi and Vista, whatever became of the issue of hardware sound acceleration in Vista?
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rattran
Moderator
Posts: 4257
Unreasonable
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You wouldn't happen to have a link to the DFI x38 board you went with would you?
I went with the LP LT x38-T2R, there's an x48 equivalent that wasn't out when I upgraded. However, if you really need sli you'll need to go with a 780i/790i for core2 or x58 for CoreI7. None of the 780i boards I've looked at seemed laid out well, and the 790i would be over the $200 mark. But if you've already got chip/memory/etc that will point you toward a few specific boards. I was quite happy with my evga 680i and an evga 680iLT, sli worked fine, no issues. Bit long in the tooth these days though.
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Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
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I also get three options for sound in WoW: System Default, Regular Speakers (X-fi), SPDIF Out (X-fi). I have no idea what that third one is.
Probably for someone like me running to a home theater, it's a digital out. Unfortunately, on the X-Fi, you can't get surround sound on the spdif out, you've got to pony up for their breakout box. What does it allow you to do? Control your components from the computer? And feh, my freakin' on board sound supports 5.1 Surround (not uber, but it's there if I ever start caring again) and the X-Fi doesn't?!
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23627
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I also get three options for sound in WoW: System Default, Regular Speakers (X-fi), SPDIF Out (X-fi). I have no idea what that third one is.
Probably for someone like me running to a home theater, it's a digital out. Unfortunately, on the X-Fi, you can't get surround sound on the spdif out, you've got to pony up for their breakout box. What does it allow you to do? Control your components from the computer? And feh, my freakin' on board sound supports 5.1 Surround (not uber, but it's there if I ever start caring again) and the X-Fi doesn't?! X-Fi supports 7.1 analog surround sound out of the output jacks on the card. Sky is talking about digital surround output.
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Murgos
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7474
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I think the whole point of SPDIF is so that you get a clean unprocessed digital signal. Not something that's already been dorked around with so that you can use a really good piece of equipment on it. I think the assumption is that the DSP in your multi-thousand dollar audio reciever is a bit better than the 1 dollar part used for the board build in.
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"You have all recieved youre last warning. I am in the process of currently tracking all of youre ips and pinging your home adressess. you should not have commencemed a war with me" - Aaron Rayburn
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23627
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I think the whole point of SPDIF is so that you get a clean unprocessed digital signal. Not something that's already been dorked around with so that you can use a really good piece of equipment on it. I think the assumption is that the DSP in your multi-thousand dollar audio reciever is a bit better than the 1 dollar part used for the board build in.
Yes you would think. In theory I think it's because many if not most people that are hooking up a surround sound system to their PCs are doing it directly via the computer rather than through a receiver/integrated amplifier first (i.e. their computer is not a dedicated HTPC system). Given the low end nature of the typical PC-centric surround speaker system I don't think they could even tell the difference between analog and digital outputs. In reality it's just a way for Creative to make a little extra money since they have such a dominate market share they don't have to care if their competitors offer that feature without making people pay extra.
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Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
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What does it allow you to do? Control your components from the computer?
And feh, my freakin' on board sound supports 5.1 Surround (not uber, but it's there if I ever start caring again) and the X-Fi doesn't?!
X-Fi supports 7.1 analog surround sound out of the output jacks on the card. Sky is talking about digital surround output. Oh, ok, that makes more sense. And I agree with you that there's probably a lot more people hooking up those 5-in-1 Best Buy box deals of speakers/subwoofer directly to their computer than their Harmon Kardon pre-amp across the room
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23627
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23627
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You wouldn't happen to have a link to the DFI x38 board you went with would you?
The DFI LanParty X38 boards use the Intel X38 chipset which means they have CrossFire not SLI support. The DFI LanParty site is here: http://www.dfi.com.tw/portal/CM/cmproductbut it doesn't look like they sell any Intel CPU/NVIDIA chipset motherboards in that line anymore.
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NiX
Wiki Admin
Posts: 7770
Locomotive Pandamonium
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Good motherboard to get since the P5Q has issues with EVGA cards? Preferably without any silly "green" power saving options.
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« Last Edit: January 26, 2009, 05:12:01 PM by NiX »
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Strazos
Greetings from the Slave Coast
Posts: 15542
The World's Worst Game: Curry or Covid
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One annoyance though - every time I download something, it's immediately scanned....any way to turn this off, or at least set exceptions?
What is doing the scanning? Firefox itself.
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Fear the Backstab! "Plato said the virtuous man is at all times ready for a grammar snake attack." - we are lesion "Hell is other people." -Sartre
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Yegolev
Moderator
Posts: 24440
2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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One annoyance though - every time I download something, it's immediately scanned....any way to turn this off, or at least set exceptions?
What is doing the scanning? Firefox itself. I didn't know it could do that... what is it looking for? Virii? Maybe it is an add-on.
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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