[Skivs]

Originally by Powerslide
LET'S MAKE THIS WORK PEOPLE!

Okay, now as anyone could see there are HUNDREDS of tech threads floating around in CD - ranging from questions about graphics hardware, to questions about pricier graphics hardware and other tech such as monitors, hard drives and Processors to announcement threads of new technology and more. (I accede - I'm not being very eloquent here

Any questions you have, tech news or ANYTHING related to buying/selling/information/announcements of new hardware should go here.

For example, if you come to the forums to ask "What is the better graphics hardware" or "What sort of RAM should I put in my PC?" then it should go here - I'm a little hazy, I know - but please keep all those graphics card and tech questions to one thread! Please!
So here's the summary, all:

• Announcements and queries on new or unreleased tech
  
• Benchmarks and results of hardware/discussion
  
• Questions on what sort of hardware you need/want for your machine
  
• Questions about existing tech and/or function
  
• Pricing and recommendations

Should be kept to THIS THREAD.

This has been A-okayed by CCNA for all who were wondering - it's up to you to stop filling CD with the same topics again and again that ask what the most powerful card in existence is so you can (not) buy it.

If you feel you have a question or can answer one - please feel free to do so.

Also, this is a great thread for you PC newbs, for learning more about your PC and hardware. http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=258050&st=0&p=4626051&#entry4626051

Also, a useful site for a frame of reference (not actual numbers), http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=476&model2=477&chart=174, and http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html?modelx=33&model1=519&model2=547&chart=211


Thanks all.
Adding more links shortly, thank you for your patience.

(Threads 1-82 have been all pruned, may they rest in peace)


http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1069729
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1073705
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1076918
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1079401-the-community-tech-thread-%2386/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1084024-the-community-tech-thread-no-87/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1090141-the-community-tech-thread-no-88/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1094900-the-community-tech-thread-no-89/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1102258-the-community-tech-thread-no-90/

Do I also have to put a big glowing neon sign to this in my signature? THERE ARE TOO MANY TECH THREADS - THIS IS NOT A FORUM FOR YOUR TECH WOES!

But we will gladly help you anyway.

Honour list:
Nottheking
Lord Athanar (SUPER-PINK!)
Insaneturbo13
Anothercanadian
Tig Ol' Bitties
Dogsbody
CCNA (Moderator)
Níeh?ggr
wolfpup
Wierd
Softnerd
wingus
DEFRON

Oh and PLEASE, if you want us to "Build" you a PC, please indicate the following:
1.) your budget in your country's currency
2.) what country you reside if not listed in your avatar area
3.) pre-assembled PC? ...or can you build your own?
4.) what is needed other than the PC tower? Monitor, speakers, mouse, keyboard, Windows OS disc? All these can jack up the price.
5.) product preferences, preferred seller, and intended aim

but please, no "I want teh superererest Peecee evar1!!!!11!1", because really, only Bill Gates has that much moolah.

And, speaking of building your own PC, two good how-to videos from Newegg (thanks to SpankyTheElf for finding these):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CStOC0hET8 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3buj5cIh2Bs&feature=related

Other useful links
http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?wpid=1&front_id=12
http://tools.corsairmemory.com/systembuild/report.aspx?report_id=12472
http://www.memtest86.com/
http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/
http://entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm
http://www.irfanview.com/
http://www.knoppix.org/
http://www.jonnyguru.com/
http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=136602
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html
http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php
http://www.cpuid.com/pcwizard.php
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/
http://www.crucial.com/systemscanner/
http://tftcentral.co.uk/
http://www.apple.com/itunes/
http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark06/
http://www.fraps.com/

[lacy lake]

Hey, does anyone know if it is possible to get a parallel-connected printer working in Windows XP Mode? I'm setting up new computers for someone with Windows 7 Pro, they have one application that can't run on Vista/7 so I put it in XP Mode. Works flawlessly, but now I find I can't print from the application as it appears parallel ports aren't supported in Virtual PC (the printer wasn't automatically added and I can't find any settings for LPT ports).

Yeah, yeah. I know how old parallel ports are. The printer works, and that is all they care about and the new computer came with a parallel port on it.

[Angela Woods]

Hey, does anyone know if it is possible to get a parallel-connected printer working in Windows XP Mode? I'm setting up new computers for someone with Windows 7 Pro, they have one application that can't run on Vista/7 so I put it in XP Mode. Works flawlessly, but now I find I can't print from the application as it appears parallel ports aren't supported in Virtual PC (the printer wasn't automatically added and I can't find any settings for LPT ports).

Yeah, yeah. I know how old parallel ports are. The printer works, and that is all they care about and the new computer came with a parallel port on it.

Would it work if you converted it to RS-232 or USB? Hmm, unless the application doesn't work with non LPT printers.

[Chris Cross Cabaret Man]

So my brand new laptop that I got three days ago isn't charging! It's plugged in, has 96% battery, but it won't go up or down, its just constant, can someone help? It's not a big deal because I always keep my laptop plugged in but it's annoying in case I need to unplug it.

Can someone help please?

Oh forgot to mention I'm running Windows 7 and already tried uninstalling and reinstalling the battery.

[Poetic Vice]

Sometimes if the battery is at a high charge it wont feed it the recharge so it doesnt burn out the battery. Thats how i understand it anyways.

[lolli]

Sometimes if the battery is at a high charge it wont feed it the recharge so it doesnt burn out the battery. Thats how i understand it anyways.

yup. could be this. Wait until it is down to 50% and see if it still doesn't charge.

If it doesn't charge at 50%: try a different plug (preferrably one not on a surge protector for the purposes of this test), make sure it is plugged nicely into the wall, make sure it is connected well at the adapter, and make sure it is fully in your laptop.

If it still doesn't charge after that: check to make sure there is no damage to any of the prongs, any of the wiring, or the head.

If you can't see any damage: it could be something wrong with the laptop or something not visibly wrong with the plug.

[Joanne Crump]

Oh I'll try it, I googled it and it seems to be a common problem with Windows 7.

I'll try the suggestions though. Thanks.

[Amanda savory]

If you can't see any damage: it could be something wrong with the laptop or something not visibly wrong with the plug.

Or with the battery itself.

[Cheryl Rice]

Oh I'll try it, I googled it and it seems to be a common problem with Windows 7.

I'll try the suggestions though. Thanks.

My laptop has Windows 7 and I have no issue with the battery meter. I would just run down the battery and see if it charges then. 96% is alot of times when the PC will stop charging it to save the battery, it seems odd to not be 100% but they do leave some headroom.

[asako]

Hmm, its charging now after I let it go down a little bit. Its very odd. Some people have this problem and their battery wont charge back up at all. Glad thats not me.

[Lalla Vu]

have the same problem if i start the computer then plug it in.

turn it off, plug it in, and turn it back on, it should charge now.

[Justin Hankins]

Hmm, its charging now after I let it go down a little bit. Its very odd.

It's not actually. That's also how my laptop (which I owned since 4 years ago until recently) behaved, and it had Ubuntu and Win XP on it. If the battery was over 95% charged it wouldn't start charging it when plugged in. That actually makes sense because, ironically, charging itself is what makes a chargeable battery "grow old", so to speak - the less periodically you charge it, the longer it will last. If you're sitting somewhere and working on your laptop which is plugged in and nearly 100% charged, then you unplug it to move somewhere else in your house and plug it in there, does the wasted 1% of charge really require recharging? Plus, too many recharging of almost completely charged battery can still be damaging to its capacity, even though newest batteries don't suffer from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_effect.

[Samantha Jane Adams]

How do you know it's not charging? Meters are not trustworthy. Do the indicator lights on the laptop say it's not charging?

I ask because most meters use approximation of what the battery charge is. It is not unusual to sit at the 95-99% mark for a long time then it finally goes to 100%. The meter can't know where the battery exactly is...it estimates. 100% is when the battery reaches full charge and that is triggered when the hardware knows the battery is at maximum charge. It's the same way your laptop can say your battery is at 0% but it's still running.

[Shannon Lockwood]

Something I'm wondering, and that would be helpful.

Just a little while ago I'm happily playing FO3 when it does its daily CTD, but immediately afterwards the system reboots. I can only guess from system failure. Lovely.
After painfully waiting through disk check everything restarts as normal, but I've no idea why it happened in the first place. Was it just one of those random things? :shrug: I get auto-reboots very very rarely. This is the first one this year. I got two last year.

I'm on XP. When I right-click My Computer, go to Properties then select the Advanced tab there's the section for Startup & Recovery. Clicking on Settings and at the bottom there's stuff about System Failure which includes writing to a system log (where would I find that?), Send an Administrative Alert and Automatically Restart. Those boxes are all checked.
Below that is something about writing debugging information to a file. I went to that file but there's nothing in it. It's a text file and it was empty.

So, apart from there, which wasn't helpful, is there anywhere else that I can find a log or something where it'll say why it crashed and rebooted? Or can I create one, just in case it happens again?

Thanks

[A Dardzz]

My 8800GTS 640MB died on me at the weekend and it doesn't seem like it's going to be covered by the warranty, so I'm after a replacement. At this stage the 8800 was probably the weakest of my components anyway as I recently upgraded my motherboard and processor (AMD Phenom II x4 955) and got 4GB of DDR3 RAM. I've been looking at an ATI 5770 and 5850. Is the 5850 worth the extra cost over the 5770?

[+++CAZZY]

Something I'm wondering, and that would be helpful.

Just a little while ago I'm happily playing FO3 when it does its daily CTD, but immediately afterwards the system reboots. I can only guess from system failure. Lovely.
After painfully waiting through disk check everything restarts as normal, but I've no idea why it happened in the first place. Was it just one of those random things? :shrug: I get auto-reboots very very rarely. This is the first one this year. I got two last year.

I'm on XP. When I right-click My Computer, go to Properties then select the Advanced tab there's the section for Startup & Recovery. Clicking on Settings and at the bottom there's stuff about System Failure which includes writing to a system log (where would I find that?), Send an Administrative Alert and Automatically Restart. Those boxes are all checked.
Below that is something about writing debugging information to a file. I went to that file but there's nothing in it. It's a text file and it was empty.

So, apart from there, which wasn't helpful, is there anywhere else that I can find a log or something where it'll say why it crashed and rebooted? Or can I create one, just in case it happens again?

Thanks

Right click>My Computer>Manage>Event Viewer it's all in there.

Also, un-tick "Automatically Restart". That will allow you to see the BSOD screen and the cause of the issue.

[Stacyia]

My 8800GTS 640MB died on me at the weekend and it doesn't seem like it's going to be covered by the warranty, so I'm after a replacement. At this stage the 8800 was probably the weakest of my components anyway as I recently upgraded my motherboard and processor (AMD Phenom II x4 955) and got 4GB of DDR3 RAM. I've been looking at an ATI 5770 and 5850. Is the 5850 worth the extra cost over the 5770?

Yes, the AMD Radeon HD 5850 continues to be one of the best videocards for the money.

[Brentleah Jeffs]

About 3 hours ago, I did a clean install of Windows 7. For some reason in my task manager its telling me how many GB is in my commit charge. Normally it always tells me how many MB its taking up. I did have an awkward way of installing the OS, but it shouldnt have too much to with it, correct? I wiped the drive, installed Windows Vista Home Premium>installed the upgrade version of Windows 7, then installed the SP1 beta again. My OS is on a 30GB partition of my SSD, and my page file is on my 300GB velociraptor. Here is what it looks like. http://i438.photobucket.com/albums/qq102/Starforce9/Commitcharge.jpg But if I open it up in dxdiag, it shows it in MB again. (only taking up about 1100). Not a huge problem, but since my page file almost always stays between 1100MB and 2400MB I like to tell how much I'm using. Thanks for any help.

Edit-Also thats always how I install the OS on here, and it always was normal before.

[Tanya Parra]

Odd. That 1/12 has me confused. I've never seen that before. Mine is 1295/4092. Same as DXDIAG, almost as it fluctuates and depends on when you start the report. (It was 1274/4096.)

This is on W7 (64bit) also.

[Miss K]

About 3 hours ago, I did a clean install of Windows 7. For some reason in my task manager its telling me how many GB is in my commit charge. Normally it always tells me how many MB its taking up. I did have an awkward way of installing the OS, but it shouldnt have too much to with it, correct? I wiped the drive, installed Windows Vista Home Premium>installed the upgrade version of Windows 7, then installed the SP1 beta again. My OS is on a 30GB partition of my SSD, and my page file is on my 300GB velociraptor. Here is what it looks like. http://i438.photobucket.com/albums/qq102/Starforce9/Commitcharge.jpg But if I open it up in dxdiag, it shows it in MB again. (only taking up about 1100). Not a huge problem, but since my page file almost always stays between 1100MB and 2400MB I like to tell how much I'm using. Thanks for any help.

Edit-Also thats always how I install the OS on here, and it always was normal before.

This happens when the maximum page file (and total commit charge) is a even GB amount. It then scales to GB instead of MB. For example you must have the maximum page file set to 8096MB (or 8GB) giving a total commit charge of 12GB. Set the maximum page file to uneven GB amount or just use System Managed.

When you change it you'll have to reboot in order for the Task Manager scale to change.

[Natalie Taylor]

About 3 hours ago, I did a clean install of Windows 7. For some reason in my task manager its telling me how many GB is in my commit charge. Normally it always tells me how many MB its taking up. I did have an awkward way of installing the OS, but it shouldnt have too much to with it, correct? I wiped the drive, installed Windows Vista Home Premium>installed the upgrade version of Windows 7, then installed the SP1 beta again. My OS is on a 30GB partition of my SSD, and my page file is on my 300GB velociraptor. Here is what it looks like. http://i438.photobucket.com/albums/qq102/Starforce9/Commitcharge.jpg But if I open it up in dxdiag, it shows it in MB again. (only taking up about 1100). Not a huge problem, but since my page file almost always stays between 1100MB and 2400MB I like to tell how much I'm using. Thanks for any help.

Edit-Also thats always how I install the OS on here, and it always was normal before.

Seems to be normal for windows 7 to do this when your system has more than 10GB available commit charge. If you want it to display in MB again you could lower the available size of the page file. You don't really need an 8GB page file anyway

[Alexander Horton]

Seems to be normal for windows 7 to do this when your system has more than 10GB available commit charge. If you want it to display in MB again you could lower the available size of the page file. You don't really need an 8GB page file anyway

Oh, its when its over 10GB... ah well. I was close

[Sophh]

Is it safe to assume that my video card is dead if I have artifacts and corrupted images even during POST? I am going to call eVGA as it is still under warranty. I tried to reseat the card and I cleaned all the dust off of it. Any other suggestions so I am not without a PC for however long it takes them to replace the card?

I don't want to buy a new card since I do not really have money for it and my system is slightly older (2007) so I don't want to spend anything if I will just replace more components later. Right now I have an 8800gtx what would be a decent upgrade that would not cost more then say $150 USD? Right now I am able to play even Crysis on High (with somethings on very high) at 1680x1050 with 4x AA and have no issues.

[Paula Rose]

Yep, it seems to be working again at normal MB, I just rebooted. It was after I had moved the page file to the velociraptor, and it must have seen the old page file partition and not recognized the new one. I have it set to system managed and 12GB was what Windows set it as. Now that I rebooted its at 1220/8188. Thanks for everyones help, it seems to be working normally again.

[Wayne W]

Is it safe to assume that my video card is dead if I have artifacts and corrupted images even during POST? I am going to call eVGA as it is still under warranty. I tried to reseat the card and I cleaned all the dust off of it. Any other suggestions so I am not without a PC for however long it takes them to replace the card?

I don't want to buy a new card since I do not really have money for it and my system is slightly older (2007) so I don't want to spend anything if I will just replace more components later. Right now I have an 8800gtx what would be a decent upgrade that would not cost more then say $150 USD? Right now I am able to play even Crysis on High (with somethings on very high) at 1680x1050 with 4x AA and have no issues.

I could still be a RAM problem. Usually when you get artifacts during POST and its the RAM, the computer it will lock up.