Calis does the Upgrade Thing

Cool, Sheriff. Don't you just love a new computer?

Regarding the unknown device, in my case it was the onboard sound. Downloading and installing the latest sound drivers from the Asus site fixed that.

Regarding the bus mastering, I don't know. I didn't have this problem using WinXP. From all the posts I read at an Asus forum, I understood that the native WinXP drivers were better than the IDE drivers available from the manufacturer. This might not be the case with Win2000, I don't know.

 

Hmm ... was your sound working when you had the unknown device showing? It could be that I suppose, even though mine is. Multimedia is a bit weird on the driver side, it seems.

I had my first non-easy problem a minute ago, as in I couldn't just come and ask how you sorted yours. I noticed when I was surfing that some sites had illegibly small writing. I couldn't (and can't) understand why. I've got exactly the same res settings as my old system. Anyone, following my finger, I clicked about for a solution in the browser settings. For a laugh, I checked the Accessibilty options, thinking of all the stuff they have in there for partially sighted people. I found an option called "ignore page font size" and clicked it. Da-daaaa! My fonts sprang back into legibility. Big fonts (headings and stuff) might end up looking a bit strange (I haven't noticed yet) but that's better than squinting at the screen and not being able to tell what it says (as opposed to my normal, more successful, squinting).

 

I'm not sure anymore. I don't think it worked before I installed the Asus sound drivers, but now that I think of it, I'm not sure I would have noticed or not. I didn't have any games loaded, and I don't remember whether the standard Windows sounds were playing or not. All I can remember is the system sounds that come through the speaker in the case.

I do know that I had a mysterious device listed in my device manager. After I installed the Asus sound driver, Windows correctly recognized the CMedia onboard sound. It works fine now, so... Give it a try, I guess. It couldn't hurt.

And if it does hurt, just roll back your drivers.

 

Two questions for you boys, I mean, guys:

1. Is onboard sound decent these days or not? Which onboard sound is good?

2. How do you roll back your drivers?

 

It all depends.

Some mobos still use the AC97 sound which is the crappy one that crackles and pops. The one that probably turned people off of onboard sound.

The mobo that me and Sheriff are using has very decent 5.1 digital sound. You'll need to buy an extra adapter from asus in order to get a digital jack. I use headphones all the time, and the sound is good.

In WinXP, you go to the device manager, click on the little tab that shows you what driver the device is using, and then click the "Roll Back to Previous Driver" button. I'm not sure that it's called that, but it's something similiar.

I suppose you could also use System Restore to roll your whole computer back a few days.

 

I use my headphones quite a lot, too and it sounds good so far. Rolling back on 2000 isn't automatic, but all you have to do is uninstall the new driver and reinstall the old one.

 

Make sure you get rid of the registry keys for the old drivers, too. Sometimes the new drivers act funky when the old ones haven't been completely wiped from the system.

EDIT - Make sure you backup your registry first, though. Don't want to fuck that up.

Anyway, I thought I might add that, like Sheriff, I may have to put my CPU back to stock speed. I'm having trouble doing video encoding using Gordian Knot. I'm getting unknown errors during compressibility checks. Whether this is due to the o/c or not, I don't know. I'm going to set my bus and voltage back to normal and see if that makes any difference. If it does, I'll be disappointed, but still satisfied with the speed.

 

Damn, I'm sorry to hear that. Sounds like a bit of a stretch, though, connecting your o/c to these errors. Not that I know anything about such things.

 

The best on-board sound I have seen so far that has been used for Asus or Abit boards are made by C-Media. Its sound is fine, and it does have a 5.1 support. But I bought a soundcard anyway, since C-Media chip does not seem to support 3D sound on some games. I also realized that after installing the soundcard, that C-Media, due to some on-board circuitry or not, produced much louder sounds than is possible with my soundcard.

 

As for the graphics card, wait for that 9700 Pro from Ati. It seems the latest card seems to put Ati ahead past NVidia in terms of performance. $450 each, it is not cheap, and strangely comes with a R/F remote control. Also the faster memory type for it is unavailable for now.

Anyways, I personally am waiting for that elusive NV30, which is not even taped out or something, meaning they even do not have the working device.

 

For those of you looking to upgrade soon, wait until Intel bring out their 0.09 micron chips, and watch the price of P4's drop like lead in water. Should be about another 12 months .

 

Jar but i want it now. 12 months is like 11 months which is a long time.
there all so cheap now. Everything is cheap these days. nothing like competition, businesses hanging on by their finger nails and the race to be the fastest at all times.

 

I'm not sure why there has beena flurry of new advice. I have my system already, and Milo's advice was very good.

I have the C-Media sound, as he recommended.

My P4 is just fine.

I'll take my NVidia, rather than chance an ATI. It is performing very well.

 

I think it all depends on how outdated your system is.

If you have a 1ghz+ with a GeForce 2 or better with a decent amount of RAM, then you might as well wait. If you're hopelessly outdated (like I was), then I don't see the harm in buying now. What you get for your dollar is a pretty good value; It just won't be the tops for more than a few months.

There's always the latest, greatest thing coming right around the corner. If you never make the jump, though, you'll just be stuck with a shitty computer drooling over hardware geek websites, keeping tabs on all the shit you're never going to buy.

EDIT - Jesus Christ, $450 for a video card. I spent about a $1000 for my whole system and felt a little guilty that my video card casted just over $200. I don't care how fast it is, $450 is just too rich for my blood.

 

I SO want a Radeon 9700. According to the latest reports, GF4's eat their shit for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, supper and midnight snacks.

 

If I catch my GF4 doing that, I'm going to be having a serious chat with it.

 

Sorry. It's already done it. The NV30 hasn't been taped out yet (working version produced) so it'll be a while before ATI will be knocked from the throne of skulls from people who have been killed by the banks for not paying back the loans they used to buy the latest video card 6 months ago...

 

Oh no! The new card gets over 300 frames in Quake while my piece-of-shit GF4 only gets 250! Must. Upgrade.

Really, who needs that much power now? Surely by the time Doom3 comes out the price will have dropped a little. But until then, what games currently available justify that kind of price tag?

 

That doesn't matter to video card freaks - it's faster, so they asbolutely must get it.

Jinxed might get it to run Morrowind on his most awesome of monitors at the most awesome of resolutions so he can insult everyone who doesn't have whatever size monitor he does, run it at the resolution he does at the frame rates he gets. You know, because he's obviously so much better than everyone else, and can kick anyone's ass at any game because he so awesome at everything and anything...